Bloom
by Jewel Rodgers
My name is Jewel Rodgers and I am your state Poet of Nebraska and I am going to read my poem Bloom for you.
First, I guess I’ll give a little bit of an intro for you.I am the 2025 – 2029 Nebraska State Poet of Nebraska, a 2025 Academy of American Poets Fellowship recipient, and a 2025 AIRIES Fellow. I am also a three-time Omaha Entertainment and Arts Award nominee for Best Performance Poet, a three-time TEDx speaker, and a nationally touring interdisciplinary performer and spatial practitioner.I like to merge art, storytelling, and placemaking in art’s physical environment to inspire and connect audiences across the U.S. and beyond.
Today, I will recite a poem titled Bloom.
BLOOM
Jewel Rodgers
This is how you ready the ground:
First, point to the wound. Know it is there.
If they say you have been bleeding, believe them.
If you fidget out of rooms that feel too big for you,
there is more healing to do. Wash your hands. Drain the water.
Then, fill the pot with more. Boil it. Hibiscus and rose will help you
let it go. Agave will provide sweetness even after the bitter end.
Let it cool. Take your time. While you’re waiting, think of all
the people you’ve made strangers of. Say goodbye. Then, loosen
your grip. Grieve. Drink. Rinse the wound clean. What good is a cure
covered in filth? Cradle the message of your ancestors under the skin.
This is how you ready the ground for your rise. Proximity to the sun
will slow the growth of deceit long enough to become the dressing.
Shine. By this time, you will know - to ignore a wound is to do
the bidding of your own erasure. Here, we are preparing
ourselves to be seen. Honored. Loved.
This is how you sow a seed:
Next, you must heal. Which is to say,
do not reopen the wound just to prove it hurt.
This is when you begin longing for “the missing piece”
to complete you, but it will always be you. Go outside. Let your skin
carry light for longer than you are comfortable. I heard the skies
hold a healing. They are looking for you. I know you’re capable of
shining like that too. Find where the jazz jukes rhythm into rejoicing.
Splay your limbs ‘cross drum beats. Lunge victory from the domino table.
The spades table. The chess table. The pool club. Find the hub of the living.
Go there. This is how you learn to smile. How you welcome back a laughter
that bellows from your body like spring harvest, thawed from the grip
of winter’s jaw. Even the seasons know you were no battleground.
You were becoming. And yes, sometimes that is violent too.
But if you’ve got nerve enough to ask God for life,
you better get to living.
This is how you bloom:
Finally, become familiar with the doing by crafting a ritual of survival.
More life will press upon the flat of closed doors and we will be brave
enough to open them. Claiming our seats and building one for another.
Crafting words that feed like meals in soup kitchens. In food banks.
In community centers. In the home. Realizing the profit in a prosperous smile.
We train our mouths to keep truth on our tongues. Defending our flesh on the page.
In our songs. Our chants. Our direct ask for the grant. In good company,
there will be no silence to swallow. This is how we find our people.
How we cultivate our safety. How we make a forest of each other.
Sprouting from community meetings. In city halls. In legislature.
On front porches and backyards. Building a home everywhere we are.
We show up. We take space. We make it ours. Daring each other to be
Exactly who we said we were. And it will be hard
But by this time, we will know how to give and be given to.
How to draw from the deep well.
How to quench the thirst of a nation.
How to bloom where we are buried.
This is how we survive.
Used with Permission
I wrote this poem with the intention of keeping it grounded in very concrete items—hibiscus, rose, agave, domino tables, spades, soup kitchens, city halls. I wanted it to move from the intimacy of tending to oneself to tending to an entire community. That movement mirrors what healing really feels like to me: beginning with personal pain and stretching outward into community and collective responsibility.
I originally wrote it for a conference centering women’s health and community health. The theme was tending to your garden—in other words, helping yourself so you can help others. So, the poem starts with the self: healing a wound, moving through grief, finding enough joy to go on. From there, it shows how filling your own cup is what allows you to pour into others.
I love that the poem also insists becoming is not easy. I'm trying to name grief, violence, the temptation to ignore wounds or reopen them, while not letting each other stay there. Instead, it offers a way forward: shine, smile, dance, sing, build. Its voice is tender but also firm—for example, the line demanding we "be exactly who we said we were."
By the end, the instructions don’t just belong to me as the writer; they belong to all of us. How to bloom where we are buried. This is how we survive. Those final lines feel like a charge, a reminder that survival isn’t passive—it’s practice, ritual, and community bound together.
POETS ON THE PLAINS HOST
Jewel Rodgers is the 2025–2029 Nebraska State Poet, a 2025 Academy of American Poets Fellowship recipient, and a 2025 AIRIES Fellow. A three-time Omaha Entertainment and Arts Award nominee for Best Performance Poet and a three-time TEDx speaker, she is a nationally touring interdisciplinary performer and spatial practitioner. Jewel merges art, storytelling, and placemaking to inspire and connect audiences across the U.S. and beyond. https://www.jewelrodgers.com/
