Field Guide

I wish I had learned your names better,

but you don’t mind, do you?

Is it better

if I can call you,  yellow creeping petals,

your Latin name?

Mostly, the names of flora reek of scientific sterility.

A weightless white skirt

lifts among the prairie grass,

and is slandered: erect bindweed.

But look at the grace

of this vapor of veined petals

filtering the morning sun.