Today you told me
about how if you watch
an evening primrose
for twenty minutes in the evening,
you can watch it go
from closed to open.
Too slow to notice
if you don’t take your eyes
off the flower, you said, but
fast enough to be remarkable.
We were walking up, up
above tree line, moving
our bodies through the stiffness
of morning into the day’s
warmth, and I noticed how
as the miles went on
the chattier you got,
too slow to notice from moment
to moment, but by the end
of the day, there was nothing
we couldn’t say.
wonderful understatement!
oh. I love hikes like these. And openings.
A keeper, and by all means a reader at gatherings. The ending grows so naturally from the poem and the primrose, but there is such a smile at the end that was not expected.