California Poppy

These orange blooms cover hillsides with vibrancy

bent askew by autumn wind


they emerge rust color, like leaves in autumn


they are not a drug, no poisonous lunacy

they’re just the natural mess that wept the sun


their begging curtains envoy below the eaves

for a bee they are prosperity’s sheaves


What a wallop of impractical weeds

like all bibliophiles of success


books you can’t renew but poppy reseeds

predestination’s floral comfort’s tress


workaholics flag eventually

then vivify bare fields or medians


memory wept out unsurpassably

poorest altruists, the kinds without friends


they are so prolific, their lives attenuate

nourishing art into their own ruinous poverty

their image seen through eternity

author: Mary Winslow
issue: Toil
19 of 42