These Peonies

From just-June’s

                         generous sun

 

come snouts through solid

                                        soil like hogs

 

tracking truffles

                      in tangled leaf litter,

 

red rockets from

                          subterranean pads

 

borne up

            on blind bandy-legged stems,

 

obeying orders

                      of otherworldly wills

 

to defy the downward

                                drag of gravity,

 

these spiky shoots

                          upstretched and think

 

uncurl their curd-like

                                 culver buds,

 

transformed to feathers

                                     flounce of doves.

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After years in publishing and PR, Patrice Boyer Claeys joined Plumb Line Poets of Evanston, Illinois, and completed her first book, Lovely Daughter of the Shattering, soon out from Kelsay Books. Her work has appeared in Clementine Unbound, YDP, Postcard Poems and Prose, Typishly, Open: Journal of Arts & Literature, and Light - Journal of Photography & Poetry. Patrice reads for and contributes to the Mom Egg Review and has been nominated for Best of the Net.