My Little Poem: moonflower

Hello, Poetry Friend

In 2017, I taught a workshop on Rita Dove’s collection Thomas and Beulah — poems inspired by her grandparents, but not bound to their stories. The collection won the Pulitzer. As we read, we all fell in love with Thomas, then saw everything differently when we came to Beulah’s poems. Dove was the first Black poet to be named U.S. Poet Laureate. All that to say, I am ashamed it’s taken me this long to memorize one of her poems.

I went looking for summer poems and found “Evening Primrose.” It does not contain the word “moonflower,” another name for the same flower, but it does describe this night-blooming beauty. Here is the final stanza:

They’ll wait until the world’s
tucked in and the sky’s
one ceaseless shimmer – then
lift their saturated eyelids
and blaze, blaze
all night long
for no one.

–Rita Dove, from “Evening Primrose”

This poem has many L-sounds in it, so when I would be wondering what the next word was, I knew it probably contained an L. The poem also has unexpected rhymes — not at all where rhymes should be — and those helped me keep my bearings.

A few years ago I read Deacon King Kong, by James McBride, in which moonflowers play a pivotal role, especially for Hettie.

I can imagine asking her, Hettie, why do you like evening primrose so much?

And she’d say, I just call ‘em moonflowers.

And I’d ask her again, But why do you like them so much?

And she would answer with Rita Dove’s poem.

Happy poeming!

Megan

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