This year my amaryllises are early. Each year their loveliness astonishes me and I wonder how so much beauty can come out of a simple bulb which looks like a large union. I have many varieties but the first bloom is always a traditional common single-headed flower as I photographed this morning.

Mix together dirt,
Water, fresh air,
One fist-sized bulb
And bathe in sunlight.
No scientist can replicate
This simple formula.

Result, a fat green shoot,
Miraculously rising.
Eureka, it bursts open,
Heads of Amaryllis color.
Four exquisite blooms,
Delicate membranes shimmer.

This lily a tiny thread
Of the globe’s fabric
Glory to surpass Solomon.
In it, the pure hand of creation,
As it is a million times a second,
Everywhere on our beautiful earth.