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New England Asters

Today’s poem is “New England Asters” by Lynn Ascrizzi. She’s an artist, poet, freelance writer and gardener who lives with her husband, Joe, in a house they built in the woods of Freedom, Maine. Her work has been published in magazines and anthologies, including Take Heart: Poems from Maine

She writes, “My large garden, a teeming microcosm where I spend many a season, provides much sustenance—the flowers that fill the senses, the fresh vegetable and fruits that feed the body and those elusive crops, the perennial ones, that hide in between the sown and planted, which yield poems.” 

New England Asters
by Lynn Ascrizzi

They’re firing purple from the rock wall,
shouting hurrahs amid gloriosas,
towering on leggy stalks
near the rose trellis, before the frost.

The dames are taking over.
Fringy and sticky, drunk with nectar,
they lean and swagger,
staging a revolution.

Volunteers from last year’s seeds
spring up near the house,
and new forces bivouac
down the long dirt drive,
ready to occupy the roadside
past the mailbox.

Shovel in hand, I am fully enlisted
in the cause of late bloomers.
I transplant rootstock,
shake out new progeny,
post ensigns amid the wan and cheerless,
marshal troops down desolate hollows,
seed my universe with stars.

Poem copyright © 2012 by Lynn Ascrizzi. Reprinted from Puckerbrush Review, Puckerbrush Press Inc., 2012, by permission of Lynn Ascrizzi.