The Gertrude Munzenmaier Prize

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.