Stem
When you pick a flower, you risk
violence to it
beyond the taking. I used to try—
wanting to hold a bright, rough zinnia,
wanting to carry it
away with me—then soon
the stem bent, its fibers
showing but not breaking, the leaves
stripping off, the heat of my hand
in the stem now, sweat and the plant’s
fluids mixed, and still no flower for me—
wanting it, wanting the shortcut,
not to go get the scissors—
I thought I loved but I was not kind.
I didn’t understand
the stem bends
so it can survive the air—
preserve the vessels
that carry what it needs
from the ground, from sun, even if hurt,
so it might, in slow-fast
plant time, repair
the damage. Now, in our hurricane country,
watching the orange tithonia
sway in before-storm wind, thinking
I’ll be needing to prop them up again,
I see: how the cosmos, heavy with purple buds,
bent in the last torrent
at the root rather than breaking,
so they could reangle themselves
from the ground
or so I could help them upright,
which I did, with bricks,
with sticks and string,
and though they lean, they lean
toward the sky.
Anna Lena Phillips Bell is the author of Might Could, winner of the Anthony Hecht Poetry Prize. Read more.
“Stem” appears in Might Could (Waywiser Books, 2026).