I long to be cycling up a mountain pass
A mountain goat on the cliff, a lake like glass
A foaming river on my left, cascading down the height
Indian paintbrush in a meadow, snowy peaks on my right.
And I couldn’t go wrong
If I had Dad along
The way he used to be
Explaining the landforms to me.
Mother and brothers would pedal too
We’d crest the pass to a panoramic view
of mountains and valleys and a wide blue ocean
Elegant towns, freight trains in motion.
Once the road was narrow, but the future was wide
Every pass a stepping stone, every mile sanctified
We ventured without thinking what it cost or meant
Some stops to regroup, but hope fueled our ascent.
I long to be cycling up that mountain pass
But freedom like that now lives in the past
Can’t do it anymore—so many restraints
Maybe in an afterlife we’ll ride with the saints.
Back to the mountain, just a metaphor
We go our own ways, life closes the door.
If you take the wrong path, hard to get on track.
Can't tell the clock to turn itself back.
Indian Paintbrush
Cinnabar to rum.
Bluish to a pink rose.
Curious toward a new path.
Waltz through painted daffodils.
Crystalline ruby sky.
Scarlet blood red devine.
Indian Paintbrush.
Open fields, red sun.
Thine crimson deep.
Fall asleep, can’t speak.
Mesmerized by reverence.
Rows of labyrinth.
I’m wrapped in your soft, willow arms.
I arch my neck as the sun plants kisses of sweet honeydew down to my collarbone.
Your light breath, a breeze, brushes my cheek and touch’s my senses.
Wild flowers grow where your fingertips trace my skin.
Buttercups
Indian paintbrush
Queen Anne's Lace
A wonderland of colors, scents, and smells.
I get drunk on your love Mother Nature.
Springtime has erupted; life's everywhere
With a fine chartreuse film that floats through the air.
The live oaks are blooming along with golden mesquite-
The scents of renewal are verdant and sweet.
Chameleon fields that change overnight;
A plethora of color; an artists delight
Yellow, so bright it hurts the eyes,
Covers the hills like a huge sunshine tide.
Pastures of green and wild onion white
Deceive the perception with flowered highlights.
Black and white calves frolic and play
Through the myriad of colors on display.
Seas of Indian paintbrush in brash scarlet red
Abut pink morning primrose, gently lifting its head;
Kaleidoscope gaillardia next to wine-colored phlox,
Mad impressionist Nature has pulled out the stops
Painting great Texas with colors galore
Then deciding to add just one color more
And up shoots the bonnets in startling blue.
Our states flower emblem, a salute to you.
JSC 2003
indian paintbrush *
beside the forest path
deer tracks
*wild flower
We've slogged through bog and briar.
To coddle the pond's "tranquility".
This emerald within an emerald
of tender water~ lily harmony.
Indian paintbrush to whisk a memory.
Winged flutes seep gently from maple trees.
Her sweetened songs will tear the eye.
If you let it be-just let it be.
The sun glances off the endless green.
Speckles it with flakes of gold.
Soon shadows of the great unknown,
will chime it's time to head back home.
So, we leave thorned but blissful.
Eaten alive by this humble Eden.
Can we ever coddle happiness again?
Garnish both bog and briar.
We rape summer,
then wonder why she bleeds into winter.
(skipping fall completely).
We were hungover through her serial morning glories.
Ignored the sun as if it were a filthy yellow ball in a childless gutter.
We walked by her streams of Indian paintbrush and violets.
While we trapped ourselves in sunscreen, strip malls, and bad poetry.
We raped summer, left it crying at the church steps.
Diamond and lace put to a spinster blaze
a pair of blue blanks.
Staring at the ripeness of our selfishness.
Now we face the fangs of winter.
Broken flowers and dead streams.
All the while thinking about the time,
we raped summer completely.
Off in the distance are fields of blue.
A beautiful wild state flower for Texas through and through.
Once called a Buffalo Clover, but now a state flower.
An Indian Paintbrush every now and then, but most of all are,
Fields of Bluebonnets growing once again.
For the Yellow Roses of Texas are pretty, yet they do not compare
to the Bluebonnets of Texas with colors to share.
My friend Polly painted a picture that hangs upon her wall.
It is a masterpiece to us all.
For she has captured the Bluebonnets within her minds eye, put it on canvas, and
it is as beautiful as a lullaby.
She said oh yes those Fields of Bluebonnets of Texas, for they are as beautiful as
can be.
The fields of Bluebonnets come up every spring.
As my one-hundred and five year old friend spoke to me, it was like the next title
to be.
The fields of Bluebonnets began calling to me.
For the only thing as beautiful to me is my friend Polly and the Fields of Bluebonnets
of Texas in the early spring.
Copyright@March 2010 MaryMMcShirley/Kilker
Little Willow dancing free
in fields of flowers like a sea,
Indian Paintbrush, yellow and red,
Bluebonnets wave their cobalt heads.
Graceful as a ballet dancer,
little Willow's found the answer,
long ago her soul escaped
from her body's twisted shape.
Arms and legs drawn up and stiff,
drooling through her slackened lips,
corpse-like in her sterile bed,
sightless eyes roll in her head.
Beside her bed, always there,
her mother knows she's unaware,
thirteen years of endless rue,
with this child she never knew.
Her mother lives an endless Hell,
caring for an empty shell,
while Willow's in her field of dreams,
her mother swallows silent screams.
©Danielle White
An agile Cinnamon bear
Saunters across rusty snow
A treacherous avalanche path.
Meandering through fields
Bathed in Indian Paintbrush
And Columbine, Purple
Elephants forcing their faces
Through marshy creek beds.
A futile attempt to find
Berries so near to tundra and sky,
The great sow tears open
Rotted logs, finding morsels
Of insect meat.
The day moves into night
And yet another sun rises,
To the scope of a killer, lurking
In the vast green of the pines.
The sow strolls to creeks edge
For her last luscious drink
Lapping the cool crystal waters
Of her youth.
He watches motionless...
In all the field's beauty
She falls motionless there
Staining the ground as red
As the Indian Paintbrush.
I cried when I heard
That my memory of yesterday
Today lay dead.
I pity that poacher
The kind of man blind
To beauty and grace
Who killed a Cinnamon bear
And ran off with her head.
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