Michael Cherry
Never eating sun,
you cannot pullulate through heavens
of light and soil, cannot reach
downcurled and thick
through moist dwelling of insect
and other darknesting life.
Your petals: a toy explosion.
Miserable spinster, you cannot lure
even the most promiscuous bee.
echo of Mesozoic trudge and stomp.
Extension of hands extended from earth,
you are made of the same
vicious molecular sprawl
we all are. You will endure
after all the merely living have merged
as dust, until in fusion you, too,
return.
Audio Version, read by Michael Cherry:
Michael Cherry’s poems have also appeared in publications such as RHINO, Cave Wall, Gulf Coast, Glass: A Journal of Poetry, Birdfeast, Connecticut River Review, and Lake Effect. A graduate of the creative writing programs at the University of Toledo and Bowling Green State University as well as the literature program at Eastern Michigan University, he lives in Toledo, Ohio, where he teaches English to college folk through the interwebs.
“To a Plastic Flower” © 2012 Michael Cherry, used by permission
