by John Linstrom

Darkling seed, paper-thin,
consider all the growth you’ve seen:
a shriveled tab three aphids wide
erupted into towering green,

cotyledons bowing still
to home, a quarter inch below.
How you came to rupture, slough,
and hunch beneath my city window,

how green emerged, where pink is stored,
I lack, but there you go—imbibe
of kitchen tap, of screened sun—
may pink your darkness circumscribe.

John Linstrom’s poems have recently appeared or are forthcoming in North American Review, The New Criterion, Atlanta Review, Writers Resist, and Roanoke Review. He is series editor of The Liberty Hyde Bailey Library for Cornell University Press and recently coedited The Liberty Hyde Bailey Gardener’s Companion. He lives with his wife and their joyful window garden in Queens, NY, where he is a doctoral candidate in English and American Literature at New York University.