Might Could
What flowers do so well we struggle to: with stamen, pistil, petal— white-ruffled, yellow, wilder— with style and stigma, anther, answer new to new to new. Mostly they do require, as we do, aid: with ant or moth or wind or butterfly, in place, they orchestrate the shift, the yellow freight of pollen to and fro, out of and into. Using what they’ve made, in shape and shade alive as cloud, they draw to them what-all of earth and sky they need to fruit, to seed, kin to kin. We gather ourselves, again.
First published in Able Muse | From Might Could, Waywiser Books, 2026. First published in Southwest Review, Volume 108.2
How sweet & delicious.
I think I would've inserted the word 'pith' in there somewhere, though, my self.
And Sylvia. Sylvia Pith. A fruit who tastes, well, bittersweet, shall we say, with a dash of poison for the better measure. Or the better pleasure when the milky-white night comes down again. As it will for all of us, when the tines come...
Sweet, especially that we and the flowers need a bit of assistance.