A Typical Way to Begin a Poem
By Benjamin Glass


This morning I snipped
        the seed pods off the day
lilies in the front yard.

The pod heads mouthed black
        seeds, bored posterity, and I piled
the cuttings in a wheelbarrow.

A neighbor showed me the difference,
        how to distinguish seed pods from flower buds,
and there I tug at stems and snip stout tumors.

The long, slender capsules,
        those flower, those bloom yellow
fireworks frozen to the stem;

the rounder seed pods rattle and sometimes
        sprinkle the ground, where, after picked and carried
in the wind, or picked then dropped in a bird’s stool,

fresh stalks might shoot up from the earth
        and someone else, after they’ve learned
the difference, might wake before the sun

drinks the dew from the grass
        and snip the seed pods off the day
lilies in the front yard.

Benjamin Glass lives in West Tennessee and is soon to complete an English degree. He has a short story forthcoming in decomP  magazine.

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