Paul Willis

       (Quercus agrifolia)

When the Colonel from Monterey picked me up
at a gas station in Rock Springs, Wyoming,
he said it was my short sleeves—no tracks to hide.
...

(Sarcodes sanguinea)

O snow plant, growing right and sudden
     in the middle of the trail,

And he took him by the right hand and raised him up.
...

(Linnaea borealis)

Who would guess, with your pair
of downcast, blousy blossoms

so close to your matted leaves,
that you are actually a shrub?

When sourgrass bends sweet and heavy
over the path and even the sumac fawns at my feet,
when little streams run large and muddy

under the light of poison oak,...

Rain at dawn on the tent fly,
the hum of an idle mosquito.  

Then another.
I pull on a headnet, turn over in my bag.

Here is a sign that surely reflects
the Puritan heritage of our college.

For though it is meant for the coaches

(Acer circinatum)
        
Gray leaves, ghost leaves
    buried under...

(Dicentra formosa)

Finally, a flower after my own.
       You there, hanging

in unashamed bivalve clusters...

                                    (Maianthemum racemosum)

Starry, starry Solomon’s plume,
your constellations float

in clusters lowly wise,
zig-zagging asterisks of light,

reminding thick and shaggy cedars,...

After the fire, houses in the chaparral
start up again like new shoots of poison oak.
The resilience of nature? The power
of habit? The shallows of the human mind?

Are you really? Underneath the snows
of winter, do you blossom on and on?
Do the pocket gophers crave you,
tunneling beneath that blanket,
pray to enter your secret chambers,...

Oregon grape, what makes you so sour today—
or every day, for that matter? Your blue berries,
ripe to bursting, look delicious but they’re not.
...

The laurel sweeps its lower limbs
all the way down the rock
and into the creek that wasn’t there
till last week’s rainstorm.

If leaves could speak—...

That’s what the sign says
on the storefront in Bullhead City
along the steaming Colorado.

When I wake in the night and think
of what I might have said in class that day,
I wonder why my life consists

A lake lies all alone in its own shape.
It’s not going anywhere.

A lake can wait a long time
for a hiker to come
and camp on its shore.

As if you were an odd species
of television, a fleshed machine
with un-rechargeable batteries.

Or a greasy remnant
of bathwater,
ready to rattle down the drain.