This week’s poem, Laura Bonazzoli’s “Eastern Columbine,” is a paean to a particularly beautiful native plant. I love how vividly this poem conjures both the flower and its inspiriting effect on the speaker.

Laura Bonazzoli’s poetry has appeared in anthologies and in dozens of literary magazines, including Connecticut River Review, Northern New England Review and Slant. She also writes essays and fiction. Her novel in stories, “Consecration Pond,” will be published this month by Maine-based indie press Toad Hall Editions.

Eastern Columbine
By Laura Bonazzoli

From stem slender as thread
dangle five red spurs—
a circlet of nectar-vessels

luring the passing hummingbird
toward stamens tipped in gold.
A functional design. Yet

on this shady road
the eastern columbine
shines

like a tiny Chinese lantern,
such whimsy
in its line and light, it startles

your furrowed griefs.
You empty
of all but its extravagance—

rising from dull stone
to daily swing its lantern,
that some hummingbird someday

might pause, drink,
and dust its chest with pollen
on the chance—

infinitesimal—
of seeding
some distant summer’s flower.

Megan Grumbling is a poet and writer who lives in Portland. Deep Water: Maine Poems is produced in collaboration with the Maine Writers & Publishers Alliance. “Eastern Columbine,” copyright © 2021 by Laura Bonazzoli, appears by permission of the author.