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It was the sort of thing given to little girls: sturdy and small, round edged, wooden and light. I stalked the pasture’s rough and waist-high grass for worthy specimens: the belle amid the mass, the star shaming the clouds of slighter, ordinary blooms. The asters curled inside my sweat-damp palms, as if in sleep. Crushed in the parlor’s stifling heat, I pried each shrinking petal back, and turned the screws. But flowers bear no ugly bruise, and even now fall from the brittle page, dried prettily, plucked from memory’s hush.

How fresh, oh Lord, how sweet and clean Are thy returns! even as the flowers in spring; To which, besides their own demean, The late-past frosts tributes of pleasure bring. Grief melts away Like snow in May, As if there were no such cold thing. Who would have thought my shriveled heart Could have recovered greenness? It was gone Quite underground; as flowers depart To see their mother-root, when they have blown, Where they together All the hard weather, Dead to the world, keep house unknown. These are thy wonders, Lord of power, Killing and quickening, bringing down to hell And up to heaven in an hour; Making a chiming of a passing-bell. We say amiss This or that is: Thy word is all, if we could spell. Oh that I once past changing were, Fast in thy Paradise, where no flower can wither! Many a spring I shoot up fair, Offering at heaven, growing and groaning thither; Nor doth my flower Want a spring shower, My sins and I joining together. But while I grow in a straight line, Still upwards bent, as if heaven were mine own, Thy anger comes, and I decline: What frost to that? what pole is not the zone Where all things burn, When thou dost turn, And the least frown of thine is shown? And now in age I bud again, After so many deaths I live and write; I once more smell the dew and rain, And relish versing. Oh, my only light, It cannot be That I am he On whom thy tempests fell all night. These are thy wonders, Lord of love, To make us see we are but flowers that glide; Which when we once can find and prove, Thou hast a garden for us where to bide; Who would be more, Swelling through store, Forfeit their Paradise by their pride.

I lay back on the carpeted bottom step Of the stairwell that like a well extended Darkly up to the window near the ceiling, Up where the Chinaman under the wide-brimmed hat That hid his face pulled the flowerpot that held No flower across the sill no one could reach. There was a television on somewhere Above me, and the doomsday clock was ticking, Someone was saying. Someone was saying something About a blockade and a quarantine, Who would blink first, lose face, or push the button. A fat man banged a shoe against a desk. The Chinaman however didn’t care. Pulling his flowerpot of absent flowers, He was content to be a clot of darkness Brightening the moment late sun caught the glass— The hat tip first, and then the hat, the arms, The rickshaw of the flowerpot he pulled. And everywhere within the light’s slow fall Infinities of particles were falling Into the flowerpot they’d never fill.

for my mother They are fleeting. They are fragile. They require little water. They’ll surprise you. They’ll remind you that they aren’t and they are you.

This morning I was walking upstairs from the kitchen, carrying your beautiful flowers, the flowers you brought me last night, calla lilies and something else, I am not sure what to call them, white flowers, of course you had no way of knowing it has been years since I bought white flowers—but now you have and here they are again. I was carrying your flowers and a coffee cup and a soft yellow handbag and a book of poems by a Chinese poet, in which I had just read the words “come or go but don’t just stand there in the doorway,” as usual I was carrying too many things, you would have laughed if you saw me. It seemed especially important not to spill the coffee as I usually do, as I turned up the stairs, inside the whorl of the house as if I were walking up inside the lilies. I do not know how to hold all the beauty and sorrow of my life.

Jim Gott and old money don’t mix. There is no possibility of change. He sent flowers to the old lady, to no avail. Then he fought the Chinese laundry over the disputed crease in his last clean shirt sent by ups ; the Chinaman got a court order that he not be so called. He makes peanuts: Jim’s thousand a year is viewed as a decent living: you figure it out. Old Gott was taken to court, a kind of maze synod, that September, ornamental cherry petals littering the streets. Thirty-eight years later the charge sheet tells us that he was called The Fiendish. In the distant future, I shall be as efficient as you.

Inexplicable, the sign outside a deli scrawled with FLOWERS and below that: ALWAYS. But there were no flowers. And I have never seen an Always. I would like to, and I have looked. I have kept my eye keen for Always, have liked its idea like an expensive purse, coveting it as it appears, riding the arms of rich ladies who are so very lady.                      I've rolled on velvet cushions where I heard Always slept, and I once tried to kiss Always, but I don't think it was the Always I was looking for. I like your Always, it looks such a demanding pet. It looks like it kisses nice and soft. It looks like the bruise I found flowering on my knee. I fell down at your voice. Not to worry, I got right back up, walked ten more blocks and by then I was halfway home. I knock my knees blue and scabbed crawling toward you, wanting flowers, and always, always, always to slide against the cold vinyl of a car's seat, your pale hands on the bare backs of my legs, that's one Always I want, and whoever knew there were so many species of Always? Your bare hands on the pale backs of my thighs, printing bruise, and if you said Flowers, said Always and we could erect a forever of something like sheets and breakfast and an ordinary day, my eyes would always slide across the table toward you, to warm their twin marbles in your palm, my face would flower for you daily, so that when we die, roses might petal themselves out our throats.

Cut back the stems an inch to keep in bloom. So instructs the florist’s note enclosed inside the flowers. Who knew what was cut could heal again, the green wounds close, stitching themselves together? It doesn’t matter. The flowers, red and white, will bloom awhile, then wither. You sit in an unlit room and watch the vase throw crystal shadows through the dark. The flowers’ colors are so lovely they’re painful. In a week, you’ll have to throw them out. It’s only hope that makes you take out scissors, separate each bloom and cut where you last measured. Did you know Venus was said to turn into a virgin each time she bathed? She did it as a mark of love. She did it so as to please her lovers. Perhaps, overwhelmed by pain, she eventually stopped bathing altogether. It doesn’t matter. It’s a pleasure to feel the green nubs stripped, watch the stems refresh under your blade. They’re here because they’re beautiful. They glow inside your crystal vase. And yet the flowers by themselves are nothing: only a refraction of color that, in a week or two, will be thrown out. Day by day, the water lowers. The red- and-white heads droop, blacken at the stems. It doesn’t matter. Even cut stems heal. But what is the point of pain if it heals? Some things should last forever, instructs the florist’s note.Pleasure, says one god.Shame, says another. Venus heads, they call these flowers. In a week or two, you’ll lose the note, have to call the florist up. With sympathy, you’ll think he says. Perhaps:With love. It doesn’t matter. You’ve stopped bathing. Alone, you sit before the crystal vase refracting you in pieces through the dark. You watch the pale skin bloom inside it, wither. You petal, inch by inch. You turn red and white together.

From golden showers of the ancient skies, On the first day, and the eternal snow of stars, You once unfastened giant calyxes For the young earth still innocent of scars: Young gladioli with the necks of swans, Laurels divine, of exiled souls the dream, Vermilion as the modesty of dawns Trod by the footsteps of the seraphim; The hyacinth, the myrtle gleaming bright, And, like the flesh of woman, the cruel rose, Hérodiade blooming in the garden light, She that from wild and radiant blood arose! And made the sobbing whiteness of the lily That skims a sea of sighs, and as it wends Through the blue incense of horizons, palely Toward the weeping moon in dreams ascends! Hosanna on the lute and in the censers, Lady, and of our purgatorial groves! Through heavenly evenings let the echoes answer, Sparkling haloes, glances of rapturous love! Mother, who in your strong and righteous bosom, Formed calyxes balancing the future flask, Capacious flowers with the deadly balsam For the weary poet withering on the husk.

Shadows lengthened while we sat stuck in traffic just beyond San Rafael. Headlights had begun to flare in the cool dusk. The hum of the car's engine lulled me, and I put my forehead against the glass, looking out over a darkening landscape. We were headed to the Bishop's Ranch, a weekend retreat for Episcopal Young Churchmen in hilly country that would someday produce superlative wines with garnet hues that stain the inside of a glass. I was queasy from the lurching of the car, the stops and starts, the smell of exhaust. Though trembling with cold, I was too shy to ask the lady, the mother of one of the other girls, to turn on the heater. I imagined pale pink blossoms on the Japanese plum, apple trees laden with white flowers, and north of Sebastapol the vibrant yellow of daffodils on slender, pleated stems. That night I slept in a single bunk made up with thin sheets and blankets. A warm sun the next day restored me, but in the evening, seated by the fire that crackled in the fireplace of the big lodge, I felt flushed. Our recently ordained curate (we were not to know he was gay till some years later) had asked me to bring my guitar, and now he wanted me to sing about the girl who decides to sleep next to her mother her whole life long instead of falling for an unfaithful suitor. I sang; we all sang together. Young Father W. had a wonderful tenor voice. His smile reassured me, but now I was tired and, earlier than the others, I decided to return to the dorm. In that clear March night, the sky gleamed like black ink and stars blazed, bright and alive. Walking downhill, guitar in hand, I suddenly stumbled with dizziness, and the slope swam before me. “Hold on, hold on,” I told myself as I nearly fell onto the dew-slick lawn. For a moment I could sense myself floating away from my body. Back in the dorm, I crawled into bed and lay shuddering with cold, bones aching. The room seemed to spin. I wanted to be home, but the thought of facing my mother filled me with terrible dismay. I knew the blue failure notice mailed by the school would have arrived. Sure enough, it lay open on the dining table when I got home the following afternoon. A Sunday fog, hardly a mist, had blown in from the bay and was gathering in the eucalyptus across the ravine. The house was steamy. A basket of clean laundry occupied a chair atop a stack of San Francisco Chronicles. Mom sat at the table sewing, but I knew she was scowling. I thought it wise to look industrious, so I began to fold towels and pillowcases. “What I want to know,” began my mother, “is whether you have any ambition? Obviously, you will never get to college. What do you expect to do with your life?” She paused, and I shrugged. “Go ahead and shrug. Do you think your girlfriend is going to take care of you? That won’t last long. And why is it you only fall in love with girls? Well, I suppose you want to be a boy.” What an unutterable failure I am. I retreated, burned by her ferocious, upright anger. “Oh, yes, I’m sure you’re sick! But you will go to school tomorrow!” That night, wracked again with cold, unable to stop my trembling, I sought my parents’ bed, stood moaning till Mom woke and let me under the covers, where she tried to warm me with her body. Weeks later we learned that one of my classmates, a robust girl who shot baskets as well as any boy, had succumbed to the illness and died. That night, my mother placed her hand on my forehead–her smooth palm, her touch, gentle–and said to my barely awake dad, “Our daughter has a raging fever.” Like a miracle, I was still her child. Comforted, I slept.