(At The) Glide Wildflower Show
 
Bear fat and nettles for hair.
Nettles are fiber and a painkiller.
Sail cloth.  Nets. Near water
but not in water. Likes coolness
at its back.
 
We slurp potato soup au gratin
wolf down rhubarb pie ala mode
 
while eyeing the strawberry (rose family) and cinquefoil (rose family)
and field parsley. 
 
Arrows point east
west to view members of the pea family. 
Another way is directly to the rose family. 
 
First a detour to view
Charming Barley from Europe
in the grass family, Hordeum murinum ssp.
Cat’s ear, Oregon mariposa lily.  Camas—
(in the asparagus family) Small flowered candyflower,
western spring beauty, and Poverty clover (pea family),
Trifolium depauperatum, var. deparuperatum.   
 
A small purple surprise.
Howell’s violet, viola howellii
and along to cultivated Apple, malus x domestica,
Rose family, Rosaceae, There is Birch leaf
mountain mahogany, cerocarpus betuloides
Osoberry, Indian plum (rose family).
 
For the heart
there is Western black or Douglas Hawthorne
and English Hawthorne (rose family). We loved
the Brassbuttons and Hairy cat’s ear  Western Coltsfoot
(rusty popcorn flower) Plagiobothrys nothofulvus next to
California ground cone and large ground cone
kopsiopsis stobilacea (Boschniakia s.)
 
Fool’s cap quite abundant although only
one species featured. Bells added
to the dangling sleeves. The announcing
the appearance of the jester.
 
Other forms shaped like a monk’s cowl
with ass’s ears
a high-pointed cap covered with bells
or a round cap with an imposing feather.

~

Susan Kay Anderson’s first book is Mezzanine (Finishing Line Press, 2019). Her writing has recently been published in Calibanonline, Cathexis Northwest Press Review, Lily Poetry Review, Panoply, Tinderbox Poetry Journal, and is forthcoming in Porter Gulch Review and Calibanonline #40.