Marie Ponsot: "Out of Water"

A new embroidery of flowers, canary color,
                  dots the grass already dotty
                  with aster-white and clover.

I warn, “They won’t last, out of water.”
The children pick some anyway.

In or out of  water
children don’t last either.

I watch them as they pick.
Still free of  what’s next
            and what was yesterday
they pick today.

"Out of Water" by Marie Ponsot, from Springing: New and Selected Poems. © Alfred A. Knopf, 2002.

Image credit: "Children Picking Flowers," painting by Le Thi Luu (originally color).