Volume 2 Number 1 • Spring 2010
I saved the pollen
from the wildflowers, they were
birthday flowers,
they were from my mother.
Orange dust
in a little stone cup,
set aside.
You should have seen
my flowers
hanging their heads having
coughed their dust across the table,
and me
collecting it, the edge of my hand
a kind of dumb, flightless moth,
gold like the smell
of roses
if you close your eyes
and ignore
their color.
Gretchen Rueth lives in St. Paul. This is her first poem about pollen.