It isn't quite spring yet, but a single
spreading manzanita is in bloom,
its upper branches dusky-rose-pink
with tiny waxlike bells in bunches.
Heather, you remind me.
Only in spring do we think
of manzanita, this tough brush
that chokes our hillside,
as a heather.
Of course, you named your daughter
Heather. But she's a long way
from this wild shrub that digs its roots
into our hillside. Where she lives,
she needs her own toughness.
We let our goats forage new grass
and pull down manzanita branches
for their bunches of pink bells.
You bring one sprig into the house
and set in it a glass of water.
The fragile blossoms are lovely
but they shed all over the sink.
Manzanita's such a messy plant,
it sticks in the soil and won't uproot.
It gathers its iron-wood limbs in twists
and drapes them with dead needles
from the pines. They march in place
like soldiers in brown ghillie-suits.
When you named your daughter,
were you thinking of the heaths
of Scotland, where your forebears
marched guerrilla-fashion?
where Heather is a tough
ground-cover, a softener of steps,
low-lying survivor?
But I think of your daughter
with dusky-rose-pink flowers
in her hair.