Camellia
for Brenda Porterfield, on her 75th birthday
Each year
you surprise me
like the first taste
of joy
after long sorrow
has tamped down
even longing
into gray wood,
and I have
forgotten all the
colors but brown,
and all the sounds
but that of
dry leaves underfoot.
I look out
a frosted windowpane
and you appear again,
bold pink, standing out
like a girl overdressed
for a party,
perfection unfurled
and symmetric as
a baker’s cake-flower,
your center a sunrise.
You speak of more
that waits
in stillness, in want
of light and time
to wake it
into beaty,
buds of potential
turned to glory —
abundance that
defies freezing nights,
resilient, determined
to bloom.
— Laura Lomax
