She defies the odds, monocarpic
shallow roots set down
high unsheltered in Andean Mountains
forming leaf rosette ten feet wide
lined with thorns’
protection of inflorescence towering
into thirty-foot-tall stalk of 30,000
flowers once-in-a-lifetime
emergence from soil’s globe of leaves
luring hummingbirds
before six million seeds to fall
by forgotten winds with a trunk
a hundred years needed to bloom,
largest bromeliad,
surviving cold
on rocky slope and standing out
in terrain she has grown from
this far thrust to let go.
Queen of the Andes, Puya Raimondii
Lynne Goldsmith’s forthcoming poetry book, Secondary Cicatrices, won the Halcyon Poetry Contest and will be published by Middle Creek Publishing. Her poetry has been published in Spillway, Red Owl Magazine, Soul Fountain, and Geronimo, among others. She has been a semifinalist in The Nation for the Discovery Poetry Contest.