Pasque flowers
We’re still in a holding pattern for spring. Every day, the sun heats the air enough that we can go out and about without our jackets, but in the shadows, a chill still radiates from the frozen ground. Gardeners are restless. A friend described his impatience to get on with the matters of summer by digging a fence post hole, and found that he could only dig a few inches down before hitting frozen dirt. The garden looks bedraggled in its fall mulch or the bleached stalks of the last broccoli I couldn’t bear to cut down before last fall’s snows.
In the midst of all this brown and our impatience with it, I looked up on the steep bank above my house and saw that my pasque flowers were blooming, always the first sign that spring will come. They are a perennial, shaped a bit like a fuzzy crocus, purple with yellow centers, there against the brown dirt of the cutbank. They will last a week or so, then the rest of the greening up will start in earnest.
I have a fondness for purple flowers–the pasque flower, the irises that will follow–and I’m a sucker for purple garden vegetables: purple broccoli, cauliflower, string beans, carrots. Write a poem about a color that has meaning for you–that repeats itself in your life or in your dreams.
Post it in comments and I’ll post it here. And maybe, now that finals are coming to an end, I’ll post one, too.
Tags: Alaska, colors, garden, not complaining, poetry, Psyche, spring, writing, writing prompt
Mattie's Pillow 
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