(Erodium cicutarium)
Here is the clock plant,
some call it filaree.
Its seed tails – the styles – spiral around each other in a long,
slight twine.
Five petals turn
into five seeds and five styles,
looking like one spike.
On a hot day the styles will peel apart
and pop! into the air.
The seeds spring,
tails following,
the pointy end of each seed going first,
tiny javelins.
The point might penetrate the ground.
But if it doesn’t, no problem.
Like a ribbon slid across a scissor blade,
the style curls up into a corkscrew
and as it turns, it points and augers the seed into the ground.
Next rain, the style unfurls.
Next sun, the style spirals tight again,
screwing the seed deeper
into the still-moist soil.
Under hot sun, above hardpan soil,
as the green of the coastal grasslands
turns tan along Zayante Canyon,
bright orange poppies litter their petals.
My lover and I lie, a blanket between
our thin skins and the prickly plants
who will stay the summer.
He picks up a living clock spring:
a seed and its tail, curling like a corkscrew,
tail spiraling out in a tiny funnel.
He twirls the seed
between thumb and finger,
finds more on the ground.
‘It’s a clock plant,’ I say,
though time
is null.
Pink-lavender flowers float
a hand-height above the ground
on their almost invisible stems.
I tell him filaree’s story,
how it augers this hardpan,
how it pops and curls.
Stems and blossoms run through his fingers
and he strokes the long styles
of a flower already bloomed and gone.
We gaze into, slip into
each other’s astonishment
as a seed sprung from Filaree
hits him right in the middle of the forehead.
by Karina Lutz
first published by Deep Mountain
poetry for The Great Turning 