Gathering Wild Petals on the Saanich Peninsula

Kyeren Regehr

clothed in bee-hum
we strum a breeze-
rippled field of sedge and rush

gentling the barbed paths
of rose stem and rusty fence
basket drowsy with petal-confetti

we’re sunflushed and heady
with the meadow-wine
blush of stamen musk

you lean in like an outlaw
or a prophet in a Stetson
say, leave one wing

unplucked—
a UV landing-strip for bees
a pollinated future

rosehip tisane
our harvesting evidence: thin
trail of anthered yellow crowns

each with a silken-veined ear
(like our ears)
tuned to the buzz

Kyeren Regehr’s collection Cult Life was a finalist for the national ReLit Awards and The Victoria Butler Book Prize; Disassembling A Dancer won the Raven Chapbooks contest. Her work has been published in Canada, Australia, and the USA, and thrice-longlisted for the CBC Poetry Awards. She served as an editor on the poetry board of The Malahat Review and is currently the Artistic Director of Planet Earth Poetry. Kyeren lives and writes with gratitude on the unceded homelands of the W̱SÁNEĆ people.