Three Flower Highway

Three Flower Highway

Three flowers I've had

to garden me along:

 first was the white highway

of dream into song.

Red fire was the second

from lightning's first born

struck cold from the flint

that was found in the storm.

Last, gentian blue stem,

  bud dark in the light,

unopened, uncolored

 sweet in the night.

~January 2014

55 words that have nothing to do with snow for      the g-man
(count includes the title)

Image: Blue Gentians, by John Singer Sargent, 1905
Public Domain via wikipaintings.org

Three Flowers

Photo by Fee Easton

Three Flowers

In the clearing two horses endlessly cable

the moon, white shadows blown

before a hooked wind on a black plaster sky.

A flying worm lights its brief light;

a little boy tries to wear it on his shirt.

In the forest bare twigs chatter against

the bony branches shaking wet snow

down upon the field rat’s muzzle

stopped ten steps from life under the

white owl’s eye.

Two sparrows splash in the birdbath.

The sun is a haze through green locust leaves;
 in the clearing a winding horn finally
blows to summon the storm-dispersed hunt.

In the boneyard by day and by night

three flowers bloom red:

poppies named
Yesterday’s,

Today’s,

 Tomorrow’s Fight

to forget

the thing that lies buried here.

August 1988, revised November 2010

 

photo by joy ann jones  2010

Posted for OneShootSunday  at the inimitable OneStopPoetry

Header photo used with permission