Hesperoyucca Whipplei, also known as Our Lord’s Candle,
Spanish Dagger, Spanish Bayonet, Quixote Yucca,
Chapparal Yucca, Foothill Yucca
Glimpsed from the freeway, and then in the empty lot
off Foothill Boulevard, that blank stretch between
a sex shop and a sushi restaurant: creamy lime-white
stalks of bell-blossoms shoot up eight—no, ten feet
from the spiked primeval sphere of the yucca plant.
Last week they were NOT, neither by the side of the road
nor in my universe, they did not exist, and now,
wild, oversized dinosaur flowers, overload
of beauty, I am driving and there is one, and another,
and two or three others, and where can I park and see
them up close? I need to stand beside their insane
height to see my own scale, to let it hit me,
as a gold rush pioneer, sun-blind, dust-swirled,
poses for a slow exposure in a weird new world.
