The Garden of Summer: More Pics and Brief Lyrics -- Field Flowers and Garden Moments

Roadside in the Berkshires

The grass is alive

It raises its own banner,

seedheads, flags for the future,

more colorful than 

grass should be

all of this wild, unharvested

The treed hillside behind

The unploughed field in the middle distance

the works of man part of an anonymous background

Impossible to recall 

what role they might play

Spiderwort

Pure chaos, they grow everywhere,

tumble on one another,

underfoot, flop across the path

Dark most days, 

then light up on no man's schedule

purpling around the property,

which in my country, is no sort of crime

Last Iris of the Season

Already a shade rumpled,

all its flags beginning to droop

 

Purple was the royal color 

once, preserved for a caste 

of blood

But this soft tint leaves room for the bourgeoisie 

and even those who work

by hands,

channeling earth to make art

Lady's Mantle

They don't mean Mickey

It's no longer a word we use 

The leaves, cupping raindrops, curve slightly upward at the edge,

the size of children's hands, 

catching water for the fun of it,

dribbling it out,

where it will do most good,

building yellow, small-change flowers

for the eye

Why, in the end, they grow on you 

Field Daisies

Another happy meadow

Those daisies, lower left,

standing straight up, offering their

    yellow-spot umbrellas

to the sky above and the smiles of passersby,

     whether six-legged or two

Shasta daisies, truly wild, 

or escapees

from Ma's Sunny Garden

And yet they do not endure the

snipping of their stems

and bow their heads in sorrow

 

'Don't pick these flowers,'

            the sign should say

The glow only

from their roots