FOREST WINDFLOWER (Anemone piperi V.23.2009) [ click photo for next . . . ]
Under Doug-fir, Hurricane Valley, North Wallowas,
Northeast Oregon . . .

PIPER'S ANEMONE

Ah, what's in a name? Well, that depends.

Anemone? A word with a beautiful history for
a beautiful flower.(see below the Yellow Alpine Anemone
I used for the cover on ON PATHS)

It comes to us from the Greek, anomone,
which means 'windflower,' meaning quite literally the
'daughter of the wind,' which in turn comes from anemos,
or 'wind.' I think the relationship has to do with the
observation someone made somewhere that a species of
the large genus 'opens in the wind.'

This Windflower appears in the middle of montane mountain
spring. It is found in the moist forest understory, in the
Wallowas, sometime abundantly, growing from rhizomes. The
inflorescences are of a single flower, with the leaf surfaces,
as you can easily see in the photo, a bit pilose, rough and
glabrous. Flower sepals (it has no official petals) are 5 to
7, and stamens (the male sexual parts) 35 to 55 (I wonder
who figured out those numbers . . .) or a cluster
of many.

It is a privilege and a joy to see these spirits of the
wind return as the deep winter snows slowly recede.

On the road in the Northwest of America.

Perhaps poems are simply paths

we make in walking, sometimes,

even when headed the wrong way;


These things—gifts, one picks

up and passes on,

along the way.

A NEW FRIEND

for Paolo

Before I could remember
how to say I was walking,
he leapt out of his car, speaking
perfect English, throwing
my pack in his trunk.

“You can stay with me.
But you’ll need a car, some
money, and a date, perhaps.”

How could I refuse?

The idea that I must walk
the whole way
went up in a puff of smoke
on the sound of tires
quite used to losing their grip
three or more curves down the road.

(URNERLAND, The Alps,
from ON PATHS)

Camas
Lilies

Moss.
Rock.
Flow.

Ponderosas,
young & old

Spring—
emerging

All Photographs & texts by Cliff Crego © 1999 - 2011 picture-poems.com
(created: V.17.2011)