A poem for a sunny spring Monday

I first heard this last Sunday in church, read by its author, as the second reading of the service. I'm not a big poetry fan, but when I heard the reading I thought it was funny, timely, genuine, and thoughtful.

She associates her daughter's name with flowers. That's nice. My daughter's named after a bottle of red and a bottle of white. That'll probably end in therapy for her, not a poem.

Then the poem was published in the Buffalo News yesterday. Does your newspaper still publish locally-written poetry? When I saw it there, I figure it was an omen that it should be a post - otherwise I'll keep running across it. So here it is.

Chrysanthemum, I say, letting the name Melt on the tongue like toffee. 

Delphinium, hibiscus, hollyhock, these words and marigold bundle in my head. 

Their sounds mean more to me than scent or hue. 

I do not need to pluck them from the earth, cutting and pruning, placing them in vases, to savor their elaborate syllables.

Once long ago a small boy said: There are flowers in my yard named for your daughter Cynthia. 

There are? I asked, incredulous. Which ones are those? 

For Cynthia, he said, pointing out forsythia, its golden boughs gilding the picket fence.

Whenever since I see forsythia, I murmur Cynthia. 

Oh, there she is. Nor do I skip the fragrant hyacinth, which sounds a lot to me like Hiya Cynth. 

My lucky girl, to be defined by flowers.

As I sink down in dark these winter days, I gather flowers by their vibrant names 

To keep me company within my house: laurel, larkspur, trillium, I say out loud. 

Geranium, begonia, columbine. 

Look, they fill and overflow the crystal bowls my mother left to me. 

Abundantly, they bow and bend, invisible. 

- ANSIE BAIRD 
Baird is the poet-in-residence at Buffalo Seminary and a co-editor of Earth’s Daughters magazine. Her full-length collection of poems “In Advance of All Parting” won the 2009 White Pine Poetry Prize.