Queen Anne’s Lace

Queen Anne’s lace grows quiet
by the roadside in spring.
With brilliant purity, leaves of chartreuse
and flowers champagne.
With edible bitter roots,
wild carrots you could call out by name.

Queen Anne’s lace grows dark
and brittle as a backdrop by fall.
She stays the night just as quiet as before,
with a heart hard as timber by sunrise
still delicate and breakable and
by some fortune still ignored
by the creatures with limbs that might call
out her name and

snap her by the stem for a memorial.

She will not break beneath the endless rains
the frost of the morning or
the bleak quiet of the cul-de-sac,
the shades of grey you could call out by name,
the warm bodies which brush blithe
against the lines of her form.

Queen Anne’s lace sleeps with
her fingers to the sky
and her body deformed in glory,
patient for the warm rains of late winter
and the sun like a cold flashlight
in the hazy sky which will beckon her
to wake once more and
glimmer by the highway
in hindsight
restored.