The Facts
by Marda Messick
After the freeze the fire spikes
that pleased humming birds
and pollen-dusty bees
with easy scarlet sweetness
are a mass of drab, unlovely,
unsightly, as in fact
the so-called facts of life
that include the birds and the bees
doing their business but also
this black collapse,
this blitzed stick end to the bloom.
You want to hack it down,
the remainder, the chaff,
the dead such an eyesore,
but the blade cuts a still-green core
and you have to wait for more cold,
wait and look at it, at what happens.
Look, in fact, until it changes, you.
Marda Messick (she/hers) grew up in the Southeast—Kentucky, North Carolina, and Florida—and now lives in Tallahassee, Florida on land that is the ancestral territory of the Apalachee Nation. She is a theologian, gardener, neighbor, and auditor of poetry courses at Florida State University. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in The Christian Century, Delmarva Review, Verse-Virtual, Vita Poetica, Literary Mama, and other print and online publications. Currently she is working on a chapbook.
