The Innisfree Poetry Journal

www.innisfreepoetry.org

by Taylor Graham

LUPINE IN HER HAIR

The mother bites her lip, six straight-pins

held between. She takes another pinch

of fabric between her fingers, pins the hem.

So many colors swirling in a bridal white

held fast in satin. Her elder daughter inches

clockwise to the light. The younger fidgets

for her turn. Last night the girl dreamed

of lupine hanging by their stems, drying,

waiting to be catalogued. So many colors

of lupine, so many names she doesn't

know. In a spring-green meadow once

she ran through mountain lupine purple-

blue as queens, or bruises. "Hold still,"

the mother lisps between straight-pins.

White lupine with just a blush of lilac

drying in her bridal daughter's hair.