Roads to Joy

The lovely names

	I tell myself
	my mother would have loved
	to hear the names of 
	the wild flowers we’ve met:

	stichwort; snowberry; loosestrife;
	sea thrift and speedwell; 
	woundwort; red campion
	meadowsweet; big trefoil;
	celandine; kippernut; 
	angelica; bugle

	I really don’t know
	if she would, if she would have
	enjoyed the new names
	rolling around in the summer
	the unfamiliar, the strange:

	mountain lettuce; cuckoo flower;
	cranesbill; dog violet;
	wood sorrel; giant horsetail;
	foxglove; hawkbit; fox and cubs;
	seep monkeyflower; cow vetch;
	water dropwort; dame’s rocket

	Perhaps she’d have rather
	slipped back to her own words 
	her search to find the connection.
	But maybe she’d smile as 
	the wildflowers tripped
	off my faltering tongue.

	I will have to 
	love them for her.