Artistic Process

Split open the rind.
Scrape off the bitter, rotting flesh
and aching seeds.
Spur them out onto the compost, where
promise could burst green
from such humid,
percolated succor.
Here,
tendril out in fragile,
breathtaking reinvention.
Virtu toughen the vine.
Scream each precious petal,
that the urgent germ
not wither,
not implode,
but blossom into fluency.

Cornelia Prevost has had her poetry published in Compass Rose, Northern New England Review, and The Poet's Touchstone. She is on the Board of Directors of The Poetry Society of NH and of Seacoast Writers Association and is a member of the "Unlicensed Poets" of Exeter, NH. She lives in southern New Hampshire with her husband and three children.