A Poem for a Thursday #153

Don Colburn is a retired newspaper reporter and poet who lives in Portland, Oregon. He was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in feature writing. Colburn didn’t start to write poetry until he was almost 40. He has gone on to publish five collections of poetry and win many awards.

Until I heard the names in my own voice
I never saw them whole: chickweed, toothwort,
May apple, Dutchman's breeches, Indian pipe.
A list was my father's way of witnessing;
it made a flower real. And this afternoon
in the weedy meadow by the towpath,
I'm jotting down odd names on a scrap of paper
for no one in particular, myself maybe
or my father. Back then I let him teach me
to look down at the ground for stars,
bells, shades of blue. He was never happier
than when we looked up accuracy's myriad names
and he wrote them out in slanted letters.
Now, over and over, like a child,
I say gill-over-the-ground, gill-
over-the-ground, gill-over-the-ground,
and in the saying see it blossom again
inside its spilled blue name. 

Wildflowers
Don Colburn