Poinsettias

by Larry D. Thomas

in Texas greenhouses
are grown
by the thousands.

Though men tend them
in the light,
stooping in their midst

like sowers
in fields of blood,
only in weeks

of ink-black
darkness, happens
their radiant red.

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Larry D. Thomas, a member of the Texas Institute of Letters, served as the 2008 Texas Poet Laureate. He has published several award-winning collections of poetry. As If Light Actually Matters: New & Selected Poems, the most comprehensive and definitive collection of his poetry to date, was issued by Texas Review Press (Texas A&M University Press Consortium) in Spring 2015 (http://www.tamupress.com/product/As-If-Light-Actually-Matters,8115.aspx).