Sarah Banks

Grape Hyacinth
 
Not the pillars of pink
and white. Not the green stakes
that splay six-pointed stars--
the yellow flares that signal spring.
 
A grape hyacinth is not a hyacinth.
Genus Muscari spikes the soil
mid-March. Between the crocus
and the iris, one green shoot
pops up a cobalt plume. From my height
a dab of bell-shaped blue
sits on the furry green beneath my mailbox,
half the height of a red-cupped tulip
when the cream bulbs whir
up their clusters of concord blue.
 
Not the olive-shaped fruit
but the clink of their indigo bells
that elbows out the daffodils--
flutters sapphire syllables.

Sarah Banks lives in Mississippi where she uses the landscape of her home state to inspire her writing. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Rust & Moth, Thimble Literary Magazine, Autumn Sky Poetry, Fiction on the Web, and elsewhere. Sarah enjoys traveling and working in her garden.