in perpetuum (high country wildflowers)   Lupines thrive here, each blossom streaked with hues of midnight and brimstone. Common fleabane raises itself on slender stems, fusing rocky mountain soil, limpid mountain rain, air rife with summer, and the sun's own fire into golden-hubbed wheels with violet spokes. Nodding to the wind, bluebells and sweetbrier entail business with the bees. I awake to a dream of dandelion and primrose, seas of paintbrush and globeflower and beargrass and wild onions and forget-me-nots, so untroubled by knowledge of their smallness, enwrapped in the world's work: refiguring the radix of life, resetting the spring.   © Michael Fleming Casper, Wyoming August, 1997   top of page  other sonnets  shorter poems  longer poems               e-mail to Mike  Fox Paws home page