“Magnolias blooming
like an afterthought: each flow-
er a surrender…”

Flower of the south, its blossoms do not
evoke Louisiana or Mississippi or Alabama
but rather the far and distant land of Japan.

“The Japanese prefer the crescent moon to the full
prefer the rose before it blooms and the magnolia
a bud long as a pencil, sheathed in celadon suede”

I planted a black plum magnolia some years ago
in hopes of adding exotic color to my garden
and each year it produced a few flowers

but never cones and I suspect it might be
there were no pollinators to make seeds.
So many of us are like that.

We never encounter the right pollinators and then
we surrender to those places of gothic southern gloom
unconducive to blooming haikus.

But there may be redemption or salvation or some
redeeming quality beyond the usual expectations for those
of us who “end the poem before anything bloomed.”