Trillium

Spring in northern Michigan

Well, we can at least hope. The cold drags on, the gray skies drag on, with increasing bits of sunlight. Here’s a spring poem, a poem about odd numbers and other barely balanced things that make the mind swirl.

Trillium
	Named for its trinity of leaves, of petals. 

The universe prefers
	odd numbers. It leans,  
		obsessed with 
what’s next. It likes syllogisms, 
	the arguments of 
		sonnets: if A 
equals B, then C.
	The ground-level 
		common denominator, 
the blood-red whorl 
	at the base, is not 
		an answer but 
a turning. Does that leave you 
	dizzy? 	What can I 
		say that would 
reassure either of us? Even 
	our prayers have to 
		catch hold 
as if we grabbed a spoke of 
	a merry-go-round and tried 
		to convince 
the universe of what we want 
	stopped, reversed.  
		What it gives us 
instead: this bad-smelling 
	beautiful bloom. 
		“Let go, let go,”
is what it says, and who wants 
	to hear that?


		Fleda Brown, from Reunion, Wisconsin Poetry Series, 2007