Willow Harth

Willow Harth (1947- ) is an artist and therapist living in Madison, Wisconsin.

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This poem is not meant for you

unless you too have been underground

choking on your life's debris, and

playing peek-a-boo with death seriously

then the surprise of ten thousand buttercups

out of nowhere on every side where they'd

never been before on my daily walk

might have had the effect on you it did on me

because suddenly

I wanted to understand how these particular

flowers came to be—the whole evolutionary

history of mosses, ferns and angiosperms,

the miracle of photosynthesis and DNA, not

to mention the longings of the Milky Way

to reflect itself in the form called flowers and

in these buttercups, which seemed like a

visitation from the sun, urging me to tell you, in

case like me you had forgotten

we are the universe's latest way of blooming.

— Willow Harth