Chloe Hite
Crocuses

We bloom first violent, violet and plum-blue-
black before, a bilious jaundice cream-
yellow with healing, purple with zeal. In
early March I venture out to pinch so
delectably delicate the fresh heads
of crocuses and violets electric
bruise-blue and yellow hue from the passage
by the creek, the unleaved vines of winter
hardy ivy concealing my quarry —
the straggling ferns just perking to fresh green
and lolling in ice cold sewage-tainted
runoff. And I sincerely nip my way
through bramble beds and straw laid down last fall
to pluck the pearl-flesh snowdrops from the bank
I pick my way back out to where greenway
grimes to grey to concrete to stone spirals
draining to the center of this swamp city;
the tender hold meant to cradle begins
to clutch perilously to calcify
to crush the nosegay so carefully made
of crocus so carefully gathered, of
snowdrops torn at the joint where the stem leaps
from the earth. Why can I not stay soft and
let the world work on me, bending me and
bruising but never breaking my head off
my body to tumble and be trampled.

<< return to the Table of Contents for New Series #11: Summer 2021, Volume 6 Number 1