March 2022
Bio Note: Along with fellow TIL members Allison Hedge Coke and Chera Hammons, I have just finished reading and judging two book awards in poetry for the Texas Institute of Letters; the winners, from dozens of books considered, will be announced in April. In the meantime, I am teaching two different haiku classes for the local chapter of the National Oasis Institute, and a ghazal workshop for the local chapter of the New Mexico State Poetry Society, of which I have been the Chair for the past five years. Even if I haven’t had much time for writing, I have been pleased to teach classes in poetic forms, two of my favorite things, forms and teaching.
Tending Lilies
Faint canticle of corolla
lost in the hissing
of sun-blistered years.
A panicle of branches
drifts into the silence of space.
I have lived in the umbra
of petals and sepals,
witnessed anthers of stamens
whisper their thin pollens,
spent breaths leveraging
a progeny wherever the wind
should deposit them.
I have never reproduced.
The howls of filaments
decant to terminal status,
as I remain safe in the spathe
of a calla’s sterile cavern
where I sing with scents
of perfume and must.
Every life: a game of
calyx and chromosomes,
of drought and deluge,
a vault of skies or earth.
Hum of the underground,
tug of the taproot,
I know my place.
©2022 Scott Wiggerman
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