taylor graham

CHRISTMAS IRIS

Under curls of artificial mulch
and gift-wrap festive with crepe,
the pot weighs heavy in my hand.
What a small world of soil
inside these holiday trimmings:
dried-up promise of something
circumspect and wizened, poor
brown nubble waiting its time,
a gift that blossoms
in anticipation
long before it blooms.


Taylor Graham is a volunteer search-and-rescue dog handler in the Sierra Nevada. She also helps her husband (a retired wildlife biologist) with his field projects. Her poems have appeared in The Iowa Review, The New York Quarterly, Southern Humanities Review, and elsewhere, and she's included in the anthology, California Poetry: From the Gold Rush to the Present (Santa Clara University, 2004). Her latest book, The Downstairs Dance Floor (Texas Review Press, 2006), is winner of the Robert Phillips Poetry Chapbook Prize.