The Sun Underfoot Among the Sundews by Amy Clampitt

The Sun Underfoot  Among the Sundews

An ingenuity too astonishing 

to be quite fortuitous is 

this bog full of sundews, sphagnum- 

lined and shaped like a teacup. 

                                                        A step 

down and you’re into it; a 

wilderness swallows you up: 

ankle-, then knee-, then midriff- 

to-shoulder-deep in wetfooted 

understory, an overhead 

spruce-tamarack horizon hinting 

you’ll never get out of here. 

                                            But the sun 

among the sundews, down there, 

is so bright, an underfoot 

webwork of carnivorous rubies, 

a star-swarm thick as the gnats 

they’re set to catch, delectable 

double-faced cockleburs, each 

hair-tip a sticky mirror 

afire with sunlight, a million 

of them and again a million, 

each mirror a trap set to 

unhand unbelieving, 

                                      that either 

a First Cause said once, “Let there 

be sundews,” and there were, or they’ve 

made their way here unaided 

other than by that backhand, round- 

about refusal to assume responsibility 

known as Natural Selection. 

                                                    But the sun 

underfoot is so dazzling 

down there among the sundews, 

there is so much light 

in the cup that, looking, 

you start to fall upward.