Botany

I’m glad I know the ground’s a botanist
and not just something that we stand on.

Grow, it says, and there’s a sapling,
then a tree globed out with peaches. Every autumn

it says, Come here, let’s get those leaves off, baby.
Kind of like science, only much more sexy.

When April comes around, it seeds the air,
and farmers copy it, use pollinators—

bees, of course, and maybe hummingbirds,
highly specialized falcons, though I’m not sure;

I’m not an ornithologist. But bees
definitely. Wild symbiosis.

What a world! Each peach tree a genius.
And smarter than science, since it’s science we can eat.

Rob Carney is originally from Washington state. He is the author of four books of poems, most recently 88 Maps (Lost Horse Press 2015). In 2014 he received the Robinson Jeffers/Tor House Foundation Award for Poetry. He lives in Salt Lake City.