I stop at a lady’s slipper see its long pink balloon blossom with fuschia veins that stream through tender flesh. Its entryway is concealed between lightly scented folds to entice bumblebees with the strength to enter the delusive nectarless flower, gather pollen in accidental fashion. The bees move haplessly along minute hairs in search of an escape—a hidden back exit where they side-swipe stamen and anther, pistil and and stigma, lift and deliver pollen, so a fruit capsule may grow so a few seeds may thrive in fungal filled soil. At the base of the slipper, I see two purple petals that spread like parted hair, joined above by a similar sepal to form a triad display that lures and guides in its Bombus pollinators. Seeming more alive somehow than all the other spring ephemerals, some slippers living for decades— I stop, gently lift the small moccasin caress its veined floral flesh remember our tenuous living. Poem by Roxanne E. Bogart Roxanne E. Bogart is a wildlife biologist and writer, whose poems have appeared in The Tiny Seed Literary Journal, The Burlington Poetry Journal, The Silkworm, and Poetry Quarterly. Her first full-length book of poetry is entitled All That Sustains, published by Off the Common Books. She is a member of the International League of Conservation Writers, the Academy of American Poets, Straw Dog Writers Guild, and the Florence Poets Society, and lives in Amherst, MA with her family. Visit Roxannebogart.com to order her book.
Poem by Roxanne E. Bogart