Tiny Wildflowers, 3

not-so-Drummondii poems

Hello, Poetry Friend

Before my last poem-painting collaboration with Nan Henke, titled Crossroads, I made the mistake of giving her my book The Joy of Poetry. In it, I described a poetry dare, and Nan decided we needed a dare of our own. So for one piece of art we flipped it: She wrote the poem, and I did the painting.

Continuing the tradition of creating outside our self-imposed boxes, Nan and I each wrote a poem for our Tiny Wildflowers show that has nothing to do with our botanical hero, Thomas Drummond. We wrote about flowers that spoke to us as individuals.

I wrote a poem for each of us. “Sword-leaf blue-eyed grass, Sisyrinchium chilense” is about my parents, Clif and Merry Nell Drummond, who met in Chile on a student exchange program in 1965. For Nan, I wrote about “Willowleaf lettuce, Lactuca saligna.” The poem is an acrostic, modeled on Nan’s word of the year.

“Tiny Wildflowers” painting by Nan Henke

What have she and I learned from spending a couple of months looking at Tiny Wildflowers? Nan summed it up in her poem “Small Things.”

Small Things

I don’t know the name of every
Tiny wildflower
But each one carries the same message
That I read between the lines
Of Thomas Drummond’s life story:
“Pace your life so that you notice
The small things
God places in your path.”

–Nan Henke

Happy poeming!

Megan

P.S. Painting & Poem combinations may be purchased by contacting the guild at 830/997-4949 or FredericksburgArtGuild@gmail.com.

There’s still time to come to the show! Visit Fredericksburg Art Guild if you happen to be in Fredericksburg, Texas on a Thursday-Sunday, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.

August 2-September 1, 2024