The Flower Economy

Poems for the "Sprouting Symphonies," May 10th, 2025.

“The cost of a thing is the amount of what I will call life which is required to be exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run.”

Henry David Thoreau

I. Value

I am a Snow Lily seed,
     at the mercy of the wind.
Landing in the dirt —
     the rich, dark, dirt,
I dig my digits deep into the earth,
     spreading my roots,
     embracing the brown blood.

Wildlife wander unaware,
     but I hold this life-soil,
as the snow melts above the trees
     and drips into me.

Time is the substance from which I am made. Time is a river which carries me along, but I am the river; it is a tiger that devours me, but I am the tiger; it is a fire that consumes me, but I am the fire.

Jorge Luis Borges

II. Time

I am a sprouting Snow Lily,
     a green stalk pushing through a 
     pillow of snow —
which covers the ground that fed me
    for years from below.

Ancient alpine aeration has
     nourished many seeds like me.
My bloom foreseen in the divination of
    early spring melt —
Cutting caverns through plush snow.

Every artist was first an amateur.
— Ralph Waldo Emerson

III. Talent

I am a golden grandiflorum,
     in full bloom.
My sweet nectar fills the mountain air
    and calls the honeybees to me.

They tickle my stamen in trade
    for my pollen and then fly away,
as I stand satisfied, 
     glowing in the sun,
     the earth proud of what I've become.

The Call Away

by Robert Bly

What is it that I want? Not money,
Not a large desk, not a house with ten rooms.
This is what I want to do: to sit here,
To take no part, to be called away by wind.

IV. Treasure

I am a wilting Snow Lily,
    slouching on the slope —
head down, towards the soil,
    who prepares my bed.

Merging with the soil,
     memories of mountain morns —
bury me into my bulb
   and covers me to sleep.

---

The voiceover is the recording of my live reading from the Sprouting Symphonies, which aired at 6pm Central 10.5.25. Each reading proceeded a musical act. While I was reading, I was playing back the underscore from a cassette, and on the screen, a book with a picture of the band was being drawn in.

The underscore was made by HeyCitizen for this event. It included four lofi-tracks which I manipulated the pitch control at times for some live wow-and-flutter effects.

Many thanks to

Zosobi Boo-Bury

for organizing this and letting me bring some poetry into this music event. It was an amazing night of live art — I’m very proud to have been included in this production. I’ll update the post when the video is available but there were also beautiful on screen flower animations were made by Sharpie and

Frankie Paint

.

I wrote the four poems to focus on a different aspect of the value-for-value economic model. Which is basically this: an artist sends value out into the universe, and if the recipient receives value from it, they are encouraged to return the value with time, talent, or treasure. What those mean, are up to the recipient.

I have been doing this and I have received many valuable things from all of you. Poems mailed to me, cassettes, dialed-in live readings, sound swaps, your time reading this, many insightful and encouraging comments, and paid subscriptions. Thank you.

I paired all the poems with quotes as I had only two minutes between each set while animations were being drawn in on the screen. I thought the quotes were nice lead ins to the poems. I particularly liked the Robert Bly poem I found. It is a nice meditation on what we really want out of life.