Amaryllis

By Connie Wanek b. 1952 Connie Wanek

A flower needs to be this size

to conceal the winter window,

and this color, the red

of a Fiat with the top down,

to impress us, dull as we've grown.

Months ago the gigantic onion of a bulb

half above the soil

stuck out its green tongue

and slowly, day by day,

the flower itself entered our world,

closed, like hands that captured a moth,

then open, as eyes open,

and the amaryllis, seeing us,

was somehow undiscouraged.

It stands before us now

as we eat our soup;

you pour a little of your drinking water

into its saucer, and a few crumbs

of fragrant earth fall

onto the tabletop.

Biography

Born in Madison, Wisconsin, poet Connie Wanek grew up on a farm outside Green Bay and in Las Cruces, New Mexico. She was educated at New Mexico State University. Wanek’s poetry collections include Bonfire (1997), winner of the New Voices Award from New Rivers Press, and Hartley Field (2002). Her image-driven poems often engage nature and natural order. Praising Hartley Field, poet David Orr observed, “Wanek is from Wisconsin, . . .

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