in the meadow magenta

(reading Robert Duncan in Haldon Forest)

bloom looks
like lupine from afar
but up close the small bell-
like flowers of wild hollyhock

        the holy that forth
        came that must

come mystery
of frond fern
gorse a magic
to which I

        relate to
        land of hillock and

bolder the grayer
sky and wood
the straight flat One
between them barred

        by the bushy Scots pine
        medicinal veridian of ever-

green which though
gossip rumor spell
or chance change us
is not changed

Copyright © 2013 by Cynthia Hogue. Used with permission of the author.