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The Gertrude Munzenmaier Prize

Scott Owens

Adding Up the Day: List

Adding Up the Day

This morning the sky was black
as earth. Today the ground stayed
wet all day. Today each leaf showed
a different shade of green.

I made a catalog of flowers,
a list of everything in bloom:
tame white pitchers of obedient plant,
loosestrife’s purple chaos,
columbine’s cluster of doves,
bright shining of moonbeam coreopsis,
fallen fingers of hibiscus.

If I were a flower my name
would be Ivy, the one
that grows beyond control.

I drink the air before me,
suck where the bee sucks,
leave nothing untongued.

I say to myself
the world is flowers
after all
if you want it to be
you make it that way
around you
and say
the world is flowers
after all.

Adding Up the Day: Text
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