I love how both students and poet participants are on the look out for photos that want to be poems. Last week I featured a sunset photo taken by a third grader. This week Karen Eastlund sent me an interesting photo from her garden. She said they planted milkweed hoping for monarchs. I have recently found 3 monarch caterpillars on my own milkweed. Two of them were on volunteer milkweed that had planted itself in a crack of concrete near my air-conditioner units. I’m so glad I left it there growing wild and free like the weed it is meant to be. Thanks Karen for this amazing photo of a milkweed seed pod, open, soft, and free.
Seed pod opens
Margaret Simon, draft
to the morning sun
waiting for a wisp of wind
to carry feather-soft seedlings
to the sky.
Plant me upon your pinwheel
and carry me along.
Please leave a small poem draft in the comments. Come back, if you can, to write encouraging comments for other writers. Happy Hump Day!
Reflections on the Teche 
Love the alliteration in “waiting for a wisp of wind”
seedlings
ready to fly
like whispered secrets
to places unknown
I love the mystery of “whispered secrets.”
Milkweed Seed Pods
There are those
who just see
death and loss
in autumn.
Yes, the leaves
change and die
with grandeur.
Look closely
and you will
see the seeds
sown by weeds,
tubs of bulbs
planted by
gardeners.
Autumn is
also life
and hope for
blossoming:
next year’s spring
and summer.
Yes to the “wisp of wind”! I’ve rescued most of my milkweed seeds to donate so there’ll be more milkweed next summer for the monarchs!
Yay for rescued milkweed seeds! There is hope in them.
Oh, Margaret, “Plant me upon your pinwheel” is gorgeous! Yes, “carry me along” too, please.
Thanks for all who wrote to my photo. Busy day for me. I love the hope of autumn, the wisp of wind, the whispered secrets. I was thinking about the way life comes out of messy chaos… my garden as an example. Haha. So…
specks of rust
and blood red
on riven pods
where
seeds emerge
white winged
saluting the past
seeking tomorrow
I love white winged.
parachuting from
a tightly-packed pod–
milkweed seed
Ah, parachuting packed pod…the p-sounds pop.