Might Could by Anna Lena Phillips Bell

"answer new to new to new."

Might Could

by Anna Lena Phillips Bell

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.

From Might Could, Waywiser Books, 2026. First published in Southwest Review, Volume 108.2