Sixteen seeds for the corpse-carrying ants
The root around my neck protects family
Rhizomes, the sum of my ancestors, disperse
Like stars and a colony of clones and seed

Three stigmas and deep venation, pollination
Out-crossing during the ice age saved us all
How would we escape the encroaching ice?

Ten meters is the average circle for the ant forage
Only the Whitetails moved us to germinate
A hundred times further away, slightly warmer and
So slightly offset from certain extinction.

(Trillium Grandiflorum is the official wildflower of the State of Ohio,
and the provincial emblem of Ontario.)