Clampitt, Amy: Grasses

Undulant across the slopes
a gloss of purple
day by day arrives to dim
the green, as grasses

I never learned the names of–
numberless, prophetic,
transient–put on a flowering
so multiform, one

scarcely notices: the oats grow tall,
their pendent helmetfuls
of mica–drift, examined stem
by stem, disclose

alloys so various, enamelings
of a vermeil so
craftless, I all but despair of
ever reining in a

metaphor for: even the plebeian
dooryard plantain's
every homely cone–tip earns a
halo, a seraphic

hatband of guarantee that
dying, for
the unstudied, multitudinously
truly lowly,

has no meaning, is nothing
if not flowering's
swarming reassurances of one
more resurrection.