The Keeping

A Sunday poem of favorite words and flowers

Photo by Ranurte on Unsplash

The Keeping

How many wild flax and prairie stars
have you picked and placed in mason
jars set on the windowsill or pressed 

into the dictionary and forgotten? 
Until a word you meet is a sexy stranger 
asking so many questions you haul the tome 

to the table because you still believe 
the weight and time it takes to run your finger 
down the page is still the best way 

to honor language?
And as you open to the keeping,
petals and stamen loosen from their fossils

and flutter to the floor as a silverfish darts
into the unstitched spine and you learn 
the word petrichor means the smell of earth

after rain and you hear the rain and smell the soil, 
write the word, catch it with your tongue. And in this way 
it becomes yours forever.