ACM Weekly

Share this post

White Flowers, Dove's Wings & a Cattle Guard

achristinemyers.substack.com

White Flowers, Dove's Wings & a Cattle Guard

A very miscellaneous group of poems

A. Christine Myers
Oct 10, 2022
2
1
Share this post

White Flowers, Dove's Wings & a Cattle Guard

achristinemyers.substack.com

Well, friends, the past several weeks have been fraught, to say the least. Without going into much detail, part of the trouble involved a violent attack by a neighbor’s dog, who bit my sister as she and I were working in our own driveway. In addition to all the stress and difficulty of the immediate dog situation, my sister then proceeded to have serious allergic reactions to each of three different antibiotics given her to prevent infection.

While we’re not quite sure why this happened, she is better now after a difficult twelve days, and we are deeply hoping that things will smooth out over the coming weeks!

Somehow (and I’m really not sure quite how) I have managed to write a handful of small poems this week, so here they are.


The first is about one of the wildflowers in this desert, the white-blossomed native Datura wrightii. Its common names range from sacred datura to jimsonweed.

It is night-blooming, with flowers closed during the daytime. The enormous blooms are beautiful and scented, but the entire plant is highly poisonous. It is, however, a fairly common denizen of disturbed ground, so a stand has emerged down in the canyon.

This poem was written as I walked up from caring for my horses late at night. There were the open flowers, a brilliant October moon, and a shooting star.

Datura

Silver moonlight fell
Upon the poison flowers’ white,
And their fragrance tinted night
At the midnight’s knell.

Swiftly through the air
A golden star fell all alone,
But many poison flowers shone
Through the midnight there.


This is a haiku of morning. Are cattle guards common outside the western US? They are metal grilles designed to prevent loose cattle from straying onto highways or other busy roads. They make a most distinctive sound as cars or trucks roll over them.

Where the road begins
wheels rumble on cattle guard:
morning clears its throat.


Perhaps this haiku is self-explanatory, at least for my fellow dog-lovers!

A most grateful dog:
much of his drink of water
is now on my face!


Doves are many here. The wings of Mourning doves and White-winged doves make a soft, shrill whistle as they take off.

I hear a pathos
in the whistle of doves’ wings
as they fly away.


The posts are free,
But a cup of tea
May be shared with me
By a dollar or three
Sent to my Ko-fi!

A Christine's Ko-fi

1
Share this post

White Flowers, Dove's Wings & a Cattle Guard

achristinemyers.substack.com
1 Comment
Arjan Tupan
Writes #trpplffct | fresh poetry & fri…
Nov 2, 2022·edited Nov 2, 2022

Reading this quite late. I hope your sister is doing much better now!

The dog haiku made me smile. The one about the grateful dog. Loved the ode to the poisonous plant.

Where I used to live, in The Netherlands, for a few years, there were some cattle guards. But mainly on bicycle/walking paths before they cross a road for cars. We lived in a green area with quite some dairy farms. Mostly the cattle does not come close to the roads, or does not generally roam free. We are more used to calling them wildroosters, which might translate to "game grills". These can be found in parks and nature-areas where some wild animals may roam free. But The Netherlands is a very small country. We do not have real wilderness. It is mostly managed like your national parks, I think. It's probably comparable to that. So the wildlife is closely monitored and kept in relatively small nature reserves.

Oh, and yes, let's share some tea. What a great way to make the reader aware of your tip jar. Hope you will get gallons of tea :)

Expand full comment
Reply
TopNewCommunity

No posts

Ready for more?

© 2023 A. Christine Myers
Privacy ∙ Terms ∙ Collection notice
Start WritingGet the app
Substack is the home for great writing