Elegy With Red Flower

One vermillion poppy in a clover field.
Rain the field drinks you drink.
Sun that lights you lights the field.
The beasts trample you, the beasts ignore you as food.
They are like pandas who only want bamboo.
Though you grow in their sloe, cow-shaped shadows,
You will never be slung by their continental tongues,
Feel their teeth clip you like grass from your stem.
To them, you are nothing.
A failed color, a false scent. To them,
You are a clover gone wrong.
What then will devour you, who then
Will you be, here, where you have landed,
Red flower in a stranger’s green field?

Jennifer Tseng