Before I ever lived in Texas, or imagined I’d live in Texas, I knew bluebonnets through Nanci Griffith’s song “Gulf Coast Highway,” where she sings, “This is the only place on earth bluebonnets grow / once a year they come and go / at this old house here by the road.” And each spring for 27 years I’ve marveled at the bluebonnets, those thick carpets of purply-blue blooms that the locals plop down in for their spring picture-taking.
It turns out that while the bluebonnet is the state flower of Texas, it isn’t actually the only place that it grows. You can find them in the neighboring U.S. states of Arkansas and Louisiana and in several Mexican states. And lupines, the family of plants they are part of, can be found from North Africa to the Mediterranean to Iceland and beyond.
In this poem by Michael Kleber-Diggs, bluebonnets are lupines once again, and live beside the freshly-made tortillas at Leticia’s in San Antonio. And grief. Wherever you are, and no matter how tangled in this time of war, grief, and strife, I wish you your share of what Nanci called a “sweet bluebonnet spring.”
“We park near
an unexpected cluster of purple flowers,
short and wild like a sudden storm. ”
