Floyd Skloot
Poppies
For years after a blaze, tree poppies
will spread brilliant yellow flowers
like the echo of flames in chaparral.
Camouflaged among crumbling bones of earth,
the pale salmon petals of pygmy poppies
thrive in thin alpine air. I have seen
acres of Oregon rainbows given over
to blind buds in hot southern sunlight,
cream cups tip their teeming bowls under
a sundown wind and prickly poppies turn
back cattle grazing a north Texas pasture.
I have been where winter rains stitch
a patchwork of Amapola del Campo
on the spring countryside. So I love
the moment your eyes close, when you become
the fire poppy whose buds must droop
before its flushed flowers will open.
will spread brilliant yellow flowers
like the echo of flames in chaparral.
Camouflaged among crumbling bones of earth,
the pale salmon petals of pygmy poppies
thrive in thin alpine air. I have seen
acres of Oregon rainbows given over
to blind buds in hot southern sunlight,
cream cups tip their teeming bowls under
a sundown wind and prickly poppies turn
back cattle grazing a north Texas pasture.
I have been where winter rains stitch
a patchwork of Amapola del Campo
on the spring countryside. So I love
the moment your eyes close, when you become
the fire poppy whose buds must droop
before its flushed flowers will open.
 |
Floyd Skloot’s new collection The Evening Light recently appeared from Stop, Line Press. The Fiddlers Trance will appear in the fall from Bucknell University Press. He lives in Amity, Oregon.
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