The Magnolia Years

The Magnolia Years

Emma Galloway Stephens

The magnolia bloom begins
as an egg, bright-shelled.
It opens—it smells
of incense at Easter, heavy
as a memory of a mother
with her Sunday pearls.
It unfolds: within, a bulb,
benevolent, blemishless—in time
brown like apple peel,
ripe with decay. Every petal
falls away. The pod within:
a crown of thorns, a dozen eyes
blinking from its bristled hide.
Its seeds are sticky—like blood
nearly dried. They fall below,
every drop a holy deed,
where, given thirty years,
there grows a tree.

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Emma Galloway Stephens
Poet & Educator

Emma's work has appeared in Catfish Stew, The Windhover, The Nature of Things, and The Fallow House. She is an assistant professor of English and creative writing at a Christian liberal arts university in South Carolina. 

Photography by Annie Spratt