Back again from Webster Groves

This is my 4th year writing with May Day. I am still tending a small midwestern corner of herbs and flowers, active with both Loosley Identified womens poetry collective and the local literary community, inlcuding River Styx. I will be in their reading at Duff's on the 19th. More often I write privately and live quietly. My life is simple, cooking and caring for the earth, watching generations emerge.


Zinnia & Marigold

The seeds are not enough
alone. They require so much more.
Even with the season
unfolding like a rainbow fan
hinged on sunshine with rain tassels
the black specks hide, barely
covered with compost, coded
by a flowering ancestor to grow
when water softens resolve
when warmth allows the code
to unfold again. The planting
is always the first wave of magic
waiting the for the slow color
to emerge, tumbling upward,
spilling into the audience,
the crowd of seating tiny lilies
in white granny caps, the nearly
spent tulips already through
with their stage time.
The curtain of sky draws blue.
These seeds are not enough
without all the hands required,
the soft stirring
of the soil around the promises
laid down before a storm.
Drops of rivers and oceans
head this way, a wet show
to fall on the quiet scene,
carried on what may be
what is needed. The show
must go on.