ALKALI LARKSPUR

This time, last year
I was standing on the Carrizo Plain
a week too late for the superbloom,
another bucketlist item checked off,
like Antelope Valley, but the long drought
had thwarted the poppies for another year.
I resolutely admired how Soda Lake mirrored
the sky and the Temblor Mountains.
You could still see vague yellow swaths
painting the crevices. I sat down in the tall grass,
annoyed by our late start, the plants whipping me
in the strong winds, wanting a riot of color,
angry to have missed the bloom of a lifetime
by a mere week. I swatted the plants aside,
they were oddly shaped, then I noticed
they had pale pink throats, and snowy petticoats.
They reminded me of a flower I had seen before,
but what? Then it hit me, I was sitting in the midst
of a superbloom, they were a kind of delphinium,
like nothing I'd ever seen before, alkali larkspur,
thousands of them facing east toward the Temblors.
The hillside was covered in snowy splendor
like a vast frothy cotillion ballgown.
Sometimes you just have to look aslant
to see what's right in front of your face,
and then you can hear the music of the wind.

4/30/18

OK so I cheated, I used an On This Day photo as a nudge/prompt for my poem. It's far too prosy. A first draft. A placeholder. See CalFlora, or Wiki, Delphinium gypsophilum, aka Gypsum/Alkali larkspur, or Pinoche Creek larkspur, found only in western pockets of the San Joaquin Valley and the southern Coast Ranges of California; majorly toxic. This is the best page for photos: Gypsum-loving Larkspur.

We got a late start, as we had to be in Vegas Friday aft for the Celtic games. So we were pushing daylight, on the plain, then got to Barstow by 10PM, a long haul. So cool to see Carizzo Plain even on a whirlwind tour, as I had never been there before.

LATINATE NAMES works for this assignment, but I wrote it the day before the assignment. Should I cheat and use MOUNTAIN MISERY as my entry, though it too was written beforehand? I'll leave them up, have another go at it later.

For today’s prompt, pick a plant, make it the title of your poem, and then, write your poem. Pick a favorite vegetable or fruit, a flower, a tree, even a shrubbery.

2018 April PAD Challenge: Day 22