Matthew Fox
*
"You had asked me quite a while ago for a poem for the VPP. When I was in my twenties, poetry was the center of my life, and I published quite a lot. Recently I have plunged back into that art, so I am keeping my promise at last and sending you a poem I wrote that was inspired by one of the quotes on your website." TJ
THE FIRST FLOWER BLOOMED
Trebbe Johnson
The first flower bloomed on Earth
around the time the last dinosaur
died. Even the most unbending
pragmatist has to admire the whimsy.
Those lumpish beasts, rough drafts
for life on the blue planet, lumbering
for millions of years among green ferns,
grasses, great pines on feet the size
of truck tires, at home, no doubt,
but appearing in retrospect
always a little out of context. Suddenly,
some cosmic emergency flared out
of the stars and the whole world changed.
Now a new population began to emerge:
beings that didn’t have to move to thrive and,
swaying with grace, cast their future
wildly into the world with seeds, able
to invent the most excessive colors,
whimsical shapes, scents seductive
to insects, gaining ground until,
millennia after the experiment began,
someone arrived to laugh with delight.
VPP Amsterdam - February 2008 |