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SPRING FLOWER
4 MAY 1970
for my son Saroyan
In Tribute to the Four Students
Killed at Kent State University
31/2 now
& handed me,
his father,
Poet
for most of my
life
at age 31 &
almost a half,
a bright yellow
tulip
sometime
this afternoon.
Said the tulip should,
without words,
after filling
a glass jar
with water,
be in the water
& put on
my writing table
where
we watched
it bend,
then lean into,
three days later,
stalks of
broom straw flowers:
Opening
& closing there
against
& around
them.
Likely,
in similarity,
the reason
Poets don’t begin
their poems
with,
I know why
James Humphrey, “Spring Flower/4 May 1970” from Argument For Love. Copyright © 1970/2006 by Poets Alive Press/James Humphrey.
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