Once More, by Eleanor Kedney

A Siberian sunflower blooms
first, seeds marshaled
through cold snap and El Niño rains.
Others followed: ‘Heavenly Blue’ morning glories,
foxgloves with speckled throats, violets
so surprising we took their name.

Everything a newborn.
Everything bare-kneed.

We, too, know symbiosis;
we know union—eggs bound
by sperm, six cradled, none conceived.
White, round chrysanthemums
spill over. The yellow ray flowers
awaken the bees.

***

Eleanor Kedney is the author of the chapbook The Offering (Liquid Light Press, 2016). Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in a number of U.S. and international periodicals, including Connecticut River Review, Cumberland River Review, Many Mountains Moving, Miramar Poetry Journal, Mudfish, Mslexia, The New York Quarterly, San Pedro River Review, The Maynard, and Turtle Island Quarterly. She has contributed to the anthologies No Achilles: War Poetry (WaterWood Press, 2015), and Write to Meow (Grey Wolfe Publishing, 2015). She is the founder of the Tucson branch of the New York-based Writers Studio founded by Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Philip Schultz, and served as the director and the advanced workshop teacher for ten years. She lives with her husband, Peter, their dog, Charlie, and their cat, Ivy, in Tucson, Arizona and Stonington, Connecticut. Learn more at http://www.eleanorkedney.com.