Thank god in the cold for supermarket
flowers. Such extravagance — I bought three
lush bunches of tulips, though I wanted
so many more to mass in glass vases
on every surface in the house, vivid
oblong buds atop triads of fleshy
leaves and upright green stems. I wanted heaps
of deep goblets spilling gladdening hues.
I think of our Texel trip with the girls.
Biking the flat lanes through the farms, quiet
roads bordered by fields and fields of tulips.
Everywhere we looked, full blossoming rows
of yellow, purple, orange, and red playing
on our retinas until all the shades
blurred in the air beneath that grey Dutch sky.
We stopped. The girls ran up a sandy path
and knelt to hide inside the glow, their heads
and shoulders peeking above the buds.
This winter ache. A sea of tulips surrounding
our shining girls, dazzling and giddy with color.
Mary Jo LoBello Jerome is the author of the poetry collection Torch the Empty Fields (Finishing Line, 2022). Her poetry and fiction have been published in many literary journals. A Poet Laureate Emeritus of Bucks County, she edited Fire Up the Poems, an anthology of poetry writing lessons for teachers, released in 2021. Distributed gratis by Bucks County Community College to Language Arts teachers throughout the county, Fire Up was a collaborative project that included the work of dozens of Bucks Poets Laureate. Mary Jo was a poetry editor of Schuylkill Valley Journal and has taught writing at all levels. Website: maryjolobellojerome.com
Poet’s Corner is curated by Bucks County Poet Laureate Emeritus Tom Mallouk and supported by a grant to the Bucks County Herald Foundation made possible by Marv and Dee Ann Woodall.
To submit a poem for consideration, email it to Heraldpoetscorner@gmail.com. If the poem has been previously published, please say where it first appeared.
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