Anna Lena Phillips Bell

Marsh Rose, Primrose, Leatherflower

Petals of the flowers that grow by the river 
fall in the river. The river is adorned 
with petals. It’s so much bigger that they’re more 
like sequins or like glitter than a brooch 
or fancy sash, but washed up on the sand 
stippled with tiny raindrops, they ornament 
the bank as they did the water. From bright pale
pink, bright yellow, curving lavender, 
the river wears them into shadows, removes 
the color no longer needed, makes them more 
of water, more, till they return to water,
shreds, film, sediment sunk or sent to shore 
or washed to ocean so the ocean too 
wears flowers in its salty self, but secretly. 
And that this river—the part I stand by now—
is near the ocean, moves slow, and changes, 
each day, direction, means more flowers 
fill its banks, fill the islands of the cypress,
so more petals for it here, perhaps,
than farther upstream; or if the upstream petals,
mountain laurel, jewelweed, swamp sunflower, 
abound but have returned by the time the water 
reaches here to water, these ones—marsh rose,
primrose, leatherflower—dress it anew. 

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Anna Lena Phillips Bell is the author of Ornament, winner of the Vassar Miller Poetry Prize, and the chapbook Smaller Songs, from St. Brigid Press. Recent poems appear in Electric Literature, the Southern Review, Subtropics, the Sewanee Review, and Blackbird. The winner of the 2021 Winter Anthology Contest, she teaches in the Department of Creative Writing at UNC Wilmington and is the editor of Ecotone.