Peter Rostovsky © 2025

 

                      by Lisa Rosenberg


 

Herbarium: Cobra Lily


You’d think nothing could unseat nasturtium, then one upstart beats another out of house and home and here we are: knee-deep in blades; waist-high in arched, flat-hooded flower sprays. Still awash in orange. Gone, the saucer-fat leaves, the petalled embellishments for bread and cheese. But early sweetness earns its keep: fierce hummingbirds descend for these keen mouths. Before spring springs. Disarming us until the longer light sets in.

 

Lisa Rosenberg is the author of A Different Physics (2018), winner of the American Legacy Book Award for Poetry. A former space program engineer, she has received a Djerassi Residency, Wallace Stegner Fellowship, and MOSAIC America Fellowship, and served as Poet Laureate of San Mateo County, California.