I thought bloomwas a single motion—a force thatsplits the sepal,bends buds back.But sped on film,in the waythe weight of waterslows the motionof human limbsthe petals swim.So air is a body,another sea!and like the bodyafter bloompeonies retract—complex syntaxwhere the full splay’sa subordinate clause:it’s this re-sayingthat describes the waveand proves death’s justthe worlds kept shutin us re-opening.
Watching Time-Lapse Videos of Peonies Blooming
Katy Didden
Feature Date
- July 6, 2022
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Copyright © 2022 by Katy Didden.
All rights reserved.
Reproduced by Poetry Daily with permission.
Photo:
Lauren Ditchley
Lauren Ditchley
Katy Didden is the author of The Glacier’s Wake (Pleiades Press, 2013) and Ore Choir: The Lava on Iceland (forthcoming from Tupelo Press, 2022). Her poems and essays appear in journals such as Poetry Northwest, Ecotone, 32 Poems, Diagram, The Sewanee Review, and The Kenyon Review, and she is one of the co-creators of Almanac for the Beyond (Tropic Editions, 2019). She is an Associate Professor at Ball State University.
Winter 2022
Lewisburg, Pennsylvania
Stadler Center for Poetry
Bucknell University
Editor
G. C. Waldrep
Managing Editor
Andrew Ciotola
Editor-at-Large
Shara Lessley
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