Long legs, capped in lace
gracefully swaying at the edge of the field
as it soaks up the last of the sun
Clouds darken the western horizon
threatening chaos in their approach
but will also provide a welcomed break in the heat
and a nourishing drink for a parched land.
There is something about Queen Anne’s Lace that I find myself trying,
year after year, to capture in words.
The flower appears in mid-summer.
By late summer, the blossoms are knotted up into seeds. The long stems and the lacey flowers
certainly bring up thoughts of long-legged girls… The flowers also remind me that the summer is
waning. This has been an unusually hot
and dry summer. Last week, we did get a
few showers, but not as much as we need as the lakes are down and the grain
crops are withering. For previous attempts at Queen Anne Lace
poetry, check out these older posts: Chicory and Lace" and Queen Anne's Revenge
It hard to bring lace and legs together without it going to Byron or Catullus. And no matter how much you go tolling knells after you won't bring it back :-).
ReplyDeleteStill I get what you mean. And they are virtually impossible to bring into the lens of a camera also.
It's great to be inspired by something, anything, in that way. I feel I can never quite put into words the way I feel at/about the beach.
ReplyDeleteThe flower always puts me in mind of my daughter, who shares the name and is surely a queen in her own realm.
ReplyDeleteThey've always been a favorite of mine too. They always bring back my childhood days playing next to fields at school and by my house. But oh no, say summer isn't wanning, I just am not ready (heat and dryness here too) to give up with even a hint that there is another season approaching. One thing, it's been a light summer for mowing....where sometimes I need to mow twice a week, this year I can go almost 2 weeks without mowing! Gee!
ReplyDeletewe don't have much of it here, but a little further north I see a lot of it and it's very cool.
ReplyDeleteSage: Monsoon Season has been strange here in Phoenix. We typically have the makings of a tremendous storm only to evaporate in 113 degree heat!
ReplyDeleteI always love to see that, too - it's nice to see a wildflower that grows in the north AND south. My best friend and her mother gave me a bridal shower back in the day and she made flower arrangements with roses, greenery and Queen Anne's Lace. She said she pulled her car over and walked through someone's field to get it.
ReplyDeleteTechnical first. You have seven lines which should be a sonnet, they are fairly easy to write, find your rhyming words and carry it through according to that form. Second you switch between the third and fourth line, the object of your poem. Is it the flower or the weather? Add a fourth connective line and break it into two quatrains. That would make the piece perfect.
ReplyDeleteI already wrote a short essay on climate change once this morning so I will simply say, that if we don't stop dumping so many million metric tons of crap into the air and quite soon, the path we are on is going to go past peak and we will have to learn to adapt to a new environmental reality.
The science on it is now empirical and indisputable, we are the main cause of this evolving weather pattern of year over year the seas warming, not the normal cycles of the climate shift which happens much slower.
The last projection I heard for MI is if we stay the course our weather by 2100 will be similar to Oklahoma today. Anyone who bothers to read this I suggest you simply do a little research on the rate of glacial melt that is happening right now.
Time to choose Koch (et al) or EPA.
There was always queen anne's lace against my grandparents house. Makes me think of them, always.
ReplyDeleteFor me, the best expression of Queen Anne's Lace is the local pottery shop.
ReplyDeletenice..i like your verse....and that drink would surely be nice to cut the heat.....love the gentle elegance of queen annes lace....
ReplyDeleteLovely words, J. I find myself quite fascinated with QAL this year especially... noticing things about it that I've not noticed before. It's a beautiful plant in its complex simplicity.
ReplyDelete