Out of Nowhere, A Johnny-Jump-Up

by Brett Rutherford

     For Mary Cappello

Storks pendulous
with human infants
can hardly fly, while
seldom-seen tanagers
scoop up the seeds
of Johnny-Jump-Ups
and levitate away —

and then, some days
and miles away, deposit them
in an undignified mound
outside a writer's window.

Thus passes through
beak, gullet, and bowel
the undigested seed,
replete with its own
self-fertilizer. Muse
of the acorn, laurel, yew,
give nod as well
to the purple-petaled
sun-streaked "violas" --
up, Johnny, up!