Spring Flower/4 May 1970
for my son Saroyan

                                           In Tribute to the Four Students
                                           Killed at Kent State University

3 1/2 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

from Argument For Love. Copyright © James Humphrey Trust

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