My Daughter is Drawn to Blue Flax
Because its tall, airy stems bend
toward the light.
Because it overtakes hillsides
scorched by wildfires.
Because the flowers you see in the morning
are replaced by new ones by the next.
Because if you plant it in your garden,
butterflies will come.
Because a farmer in Pasco who planted eighty acres said his field
resembles a blue lake.
Because flax is not simply a pretty flower
but can be woven into baskets.
Because the seeds can be ground into grain, pressed into oil
that soothes and calms.
Because 30,000 years ago cave dwellers dyed, spun, and braided
its fibers into snares and seines, rope and string.
Because linen shares a root with lineage.
Because it’s three times stronger than cotton.
Because every fiber of her waves in the same breeze.
She Says
it has to have a chickadee on a branch. Trees of any kind.
(Douglas firs? Hemlocks?) She says it doesn’t matter—
you choose. She says there must be bushes and brambles.
You know, like huckleberries or salal. (I’m thinking of the path
where we saw the fox.) The deer is the main character.
It has a walking stick. It’s pointing at an owl, and I’m thinking
of our trips to the zoo, watching Luna, the barn owl,
silently glide toward the arm of the keeper. The deer
is the mother of the woods, she says, presiding over
the chickadees. Chickadees, I think, like the ones we hear
on our daily walks past the rainbow house. There must
be fruits, she says, vining their way down. I’m thinking
Himalayan blackberry, panicles on the tips of shoots
(technically drupelets). Their flowers: perfect pink.
You can skip the brambles, she says, but not the deer.
I’m thinking of a fawn. A fawn with a doe.
They were near your bedroom window. I don’t think
you heard, but the fawn was mewling for milk.
Not the one named Chewy, she asks. No, not Chewy.
Oh, and make sure there’s foxglove and snapdragons.
She’s right: how could there be a poem without those?
And miner’s lettuce. Of course! I’ll put it here, at the top
of Constance Pass, where we pitched our tents the night
before the night of the Perseids, when we saw six planets.
Because she asks for a swallow, I have one swoop
over Buckhorn Lake. Because she asks for black trumpets,
I place a basketful in a clump of wild grasses, beside
a rabbit in its burrow, beneath a crescent moon.
Martha Silano’s most recent collection is Gravity Assist (Saturnalia Books, 2019). She is also co-author of The Daily Poet: Day-by-Day Prompts for Your Writing Practice. Martha teaches at Bellevue College. Keep up with her at marthasilano.net.
Read other poetry by Martha Silano appearing in Terrain.org: one poem, Letter to America, two poems, and two poems.
Ruby Cook’s artwork derives from the inspiration of fairy tales, graphic novels, and her interactions with nature. Her primary muse is the natural world. She works digitally, illustrating character-based pieces and detailed environments.
Header photo by Julian Elliott, courtesy Shutterstock. Photo of Martha Silano by Kelli Russell Agodon.
