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River of Flowers by Tom Romero

"RIVER OF FLOWERS"
copyright 2006 by TOM ROMERO

March: Sacred and Profane

A poem by Linda Simone

The stained-glass sky refines the day's first light,
cold-blooded choristers' Magnificat.
On daily pilgrimage down cobblestones,
I'm rapt by sermons spinning in my head—
irreverent words of Dickinson and Frost.

Along the way, tulips and daffodils
unfurl like strippers—all chartreuse and red
bursting through ground, still hard and brown and caked.
Brazen, they make me blush and drop my jaw
to air thickset with hyacinth perfume.

And later honeysuckle—scent not for me
but procreation—and pollinating bees.

Copyright 2006 by Linda Simone

Linda Simone Linda writes:
Morning walks have been my means of meditation before going to work. In observing nature, I've been gifted with many ideas for poems—even a line or rhythm. This poem was jolted out of a shocking explosion of tulips and daffodils—almost brazen in an otherwise sacrosanct dawn.

Linda Simone's chapbook, Cow Tippers, won the 2006 Shadow Poetry Chapbook Competition. Her poems have appeared in Midnight Mind, NewVerseNews.com, Westview and Potomac Review, and in anthologies including en(compass) and Essential Love. She was former poetry editor for Inkwell, the literary journal of Manhattanville College, where she is Associate Director of Graduate Writing. Moon: A Poem, her first book for children, was published in 2002. Linda can be reached via email at lindsim1@aol.com.

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