O to be a Flower O to be a flower, growing in beds of roses bright amid those vernal climes, touching the hands of an unseen worker.

All thrusting down through fathoms swell drawing neither title nor intention, without summer’s desert. My petals score against blooms smooth, as perfumes mingle, warming scents of leaves, fragrances of dawn. I ought to know we are alive, I suppose, joined through colored sunsets and spices. Cornerstones on soil that teems, beautiful and cloying, mixing out of reach.”

• Marianne Moore