Queen Anne’s Lace…

Legend has it that Queen Anne, the wife of King James I,  was challenged by her friends to create lace as beautiful as a flower.  While making the lace, she pricked her finger, and it’s said that the purple-red flower in the center of Queen Anne’s Lace represents a droplet of her blood.  In reality this spot attracts insects… It was  interesting to discover that if the cut stems of this flower are placed in colored water the white florets will absorb it…much like carnations do…I will have to try it someday to impress the grandchildren…

This is one wild-flower that has always been ubiquitous in my area…maybe over-looked …but always a sign of summer for me.  Thanks to a summer library booksale I came across this William Carlos Williams poem…

 

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Queen-Ann’s-Lace

by William Carlos Williams

 

Her body is not so white as

anemony petals nor so smooth – nor

so remote a thing.  It is a field

of the wild carrot taking

the field by force; the grass

does not raise above it.

Here is no question of whiteness,

white as can be, with a purple mole

at the center of each flower.

Each flower is a hand’s span

of her whiteness.  Wherever

his hand has lain there is

a tiny purple blemish.  Each part

is a blossom under his touch

to which the fibres of her being

stem one by one, each to its end,

until the whole field is a

white desire, empty, a single stem,

a cluster, flower by flower,

a pious wish to whiteness gone over -

or nothing.