Thinking of Flowers

Found this Jane Kenyon poem* today:

February: Thinking of Flowers

Now wind torments the field,
turning the white surface back
on itself, back and back on itself,
like an animal licking a wound.

Nothing but white--the air, the light;
only one brown milkweed pod
bobbing in the gully, smallest
brown boat on the immense tide.

A single green sprouting thing
would restore me. . . .

Then think of the tall delphinium,
swaying, or the bee when it comes
to the tongue of the burgundy lily.

Jane Kenyon lived in New Hampshire (my home state) with her husband, the poet Donald Hall. When she died in 1995, she was New Hampshire's poet laureate.

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*Copyright © 1986 by the Estate of Jane Kenyon. Reprinted from The Boat of Quiet Hours by Jane Kenyon, published by Graywolf Press.