Daye Phillippo: “Purple Hyacinth”
PURPLE HYACINTH
A purple hyacinth is scenting the room.
xxxxxOn the table, tax documents splayed
as we wait for the last forms to straggle in,
xxxxxwhich is not to say that hyacinth
is a coin bearing Caesar’s likeness
xxxxxdrawn from the mouth of a fish,
one coin to cover the cost, but that
xxxxxthe scent of hyacinth is recompense
for short winter days and rendering
xxxxxunto Caesar, for time, years piling up,
waist-high like snowbanks against the barn.
Daye Phillippo taught English at Purdue University and her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Poetry, Valparaiso Poetry Review, Presence, Midwest Quarterly, Cider Press Review, One Art, Shenandoah, The Windhover, and many others. She lives and writes in rural Indiana where she hosts a monthly Poetry Hour at her local library. Thunderhead (Slant, 2020) was her debut full-length collection.