Life’s Little Misdirections 🥀🦋

Wild Summers Captured

By the camp creek, spying for frogs,
On weedy banks buttercups captured.
Child wonder applied soft, yellow heads
To skin, happy makeup to show mother.

Under the shaded apple tree, viewing
Black and yellow, so gracefully dutiful,
Pink buds burgeoning pollinated. Below,
Serenaded by persistent violets deeply hued.

The most vibrant colors contained, collected
In small bouquets, handed a scrub woman
Who remarked while she helped find
Just the right mug, dipped in well water.

Where small slithering grass snakes chased
Into thick of fern, bright white trillium thrived
In late spring. She instructed me to leave be,
let stray in our forest meadows naturally.

His mower sparked to life, gas and oil
Smudged the red paint, when I roared.
To and fro, sent sparing every friend,
Dandelions clotted a dry, dusty field.

Yellow specter seldom seen age puffed
Wisp spores, sent like wild, summer bubbles
Blown off a stick from that old front porch.
Wayward, wildflowers in alleys, behind shed,

Roaming hill and dale, floated away down
Railroad tracks, where lonely I flowed, too.
Collecting every bit of color, dead or alive,
A busy woman was allowed time to smile.

Serendipity captured by innocence along
Brush-cut power lines, connecting rugged
Properties, revealed blooming strawberry,
Patches hidden beneath red and green leaves,

In those early days before full maturation.
Nature inspired a young dreamer with hope,
Nostalgically spared summers of memory 
When a woman adored a child’s wild love.

4.30.22
36 lines, free verse

Prompt:
What do (you) choose to see?
The weeds or the flowers?
2nd place, April, 2021 (last minute entry) Revised here: "Wild Love"