Diana Cole

Diana Cole, a Pushcart Prize nominee, has had poems published in numerous journals including Poetry East, Spillway, The Tar River Review, Cider Press Review, GBH Public Radio, Friends Journal, Verse Daily, Tipton Poetry Journal, The New Verse News and most recently in The Main Street Rag and Crab Creek Review. Her chapbook, Songs By Heart was published in 2018 by Iris Press. She is an editor for The Crosswinds Poetry Journal and a member of Ocean State Poets whose mission is to encourage the reading, writing and sharing of poetry. When she is not writing, Ms. Cole is a stained glass artist. dianacole.net
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Visit Diana at www.dianacole.net to learn more about her, about her poetry and her stained glass work.

Diana's Poetry
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Eight Tulips
The flowers, fed up with winter
lockdown, force their way past sepals,
sentinels of social distancing.

This is their time of year to cluster,
breathe all over each other
and the earth. This is the time for bees

to close in and nose down,
a dram at the carpel lip,
a cling of yellow grain shed                          
into a corolla nodding nearby.  
And all of us susceptible --
spongy spots, rot and mold;

cloudy wing, foulbrood, paralysis;
fever, dry cough, loss of taste.
The flower, the bee. And I,  

spreading bland honey on toast. 
On my table a vase of eight tulips, 
each black stamen packed with pollen

ready to carry a genetic bomb
into my neighbor’s garden
if I open the window to breathe.

First Published in Crab Creek Review  2021

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