What if we are just the debris
of our universe’s super nova blastoff
perhaps viewed afar off in a vast sky
of the many universes some believe
we are part of? We are smaller
than any thought of the Whos in Whoville,
and yet, you surely agree, it all seems
important. A microscope is one oracle
of the power in what is too significant
to be ignored, too invisible to guess.
Yet that power is non-existent
to me unless coincidences of time
and proximity bring me to a view
that my frail and narrow-band senses
are not fit for. All this tends to squash
any tiny scoffer in my soul.
Meanwhile, the purple petals of my tall iris
have fisted up against the cold,
but for two days now they have each
unfurled their velvety flags again
to the afternoon sun. I somehow believe
they might well open again today.

CAROL HAMILTON taught 2nd grade through graduate school in Connecticut, Indiana and Oklahoma, was a medical translator and storyteller. She was Poet Laureate of Oklahoma and has published and received various awards for 19 books and chapbooks of poetry, children’s novels, and legends. She was nominated for Best of the Net and ten times for a Pushcart Prize.