Poetry / Writing

Poetry Friday: X is for Hope

Catherine Flynn9 Comments

I loved the A.P. Biology class I took in high school. Believe it or not, I remember much of what I learned all those years ago. So when I was planning this project, I didn’t have to think twice about the word I would use for x. Xylem was right there, just waiting to be celebrated in a poem. Fast forward to this week of testing, planning for next year, and caring for my family and you have…a very brief poem acknowledging the hard work xylem does.

X is for Hope

Why?

Because…

Water + xylem + sunlight =

GREEN

Vibrant or muted,
bursting from stems supported
by strong, thirsty straws

Draft, © Catherine Flynn, 2023

Xylem cells stained red
Nicholas.H.Hale, CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Thank you to Laura Purdie Salas for her brilliant book, Snowman – Cold = Puddle, for the inspiration! Please be sure to visit Janice Scully at Salt City Verse for the Poetry Friday Roundup!

9 thoughts on “Poetry Friday: X is for Hope”

  2. Thirsty straws. Not only hope, but awe at the marvel of the complexity that all life is. And juxtaposed in my heart at times is looking at the ways we manage to ignore, forget to marvel, and are to busy with minutiae to remember to hope and then chase those dreams. Your Xylem poem struck a nerve. I think that is a type of high compliment.

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  4. Hooray for xylem…in a poem. I remember I used “xylem” as a word in a poem years and years ago and it really tripped up my teacher. LOL! You’ve used it beautifully.

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  9. I’m trying to contact you because, with a friend, we are producing our fifth anthology of poems and we would very much like to include one of yours- Instructions for a Bookcase.
    We are Lautus Press in the UK. Not sure if my email will show on this…

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