39 Flower poems

This is a year of poppies: our land was brimming with them as May burned into June and I returned— a sweet dark wine that made me drunk. From clouds of mulberry to grains to grasses ripeness was all, in the fitting heat, in the slow drowsiness spreading through the universe of green. My life half over I saw grown sons setting off alone and vanishing from sight beyond the prison the flight of the swallow makes in the spent glow of a stormy evening, but the pain gave way humanely to the light coming on inside the house for another meal in air made cooler by hail letting off steam in the distance.

See, the grass is full of stars, Fallen in their brightness; Hearts they have of shining gold, Rays of shining whiteness. Buttercups have honeyed hearts, Bees they love the clover, But I love the daisies' dance All the meadow over. Blow, O blow, you happy winds, Singing summer's praises, Up the field and down the field A-dancing with the daisies.

Blue light ringing through the green grass. The bent heads of petals are not praying to anything or to anyone. Only we are standing in a field of them, my son and me and me holding him. In my arms he stretches out to the very far ends of the earth like a radio signal made of skin and organs, of everything. I was singing a song to him I made up about me dying. Since yesterday he has not been crying as much as screaming like it is terrifying to wake up. It is terrifying to wake up and terrifying to sleep and his feet going blue in the cold spring air in which he is growing. His mother is growing him with the milk she makes all day, spilling out in blue. The song I am singing to him puts him to sleep, will put me to sleep. Will one day burst the drum in my ear like a bell, very much like a voice screaming from far off, though you don’t know if it’s hurting or hungry or nothing at all.

A flower needs to be this size to conceal the winter window, and this color, the red of a Fiat with the top down, to impress us, dull as we've grown. Months ago the gigantic onion of a bulb half above the soil stuck out its green tongue and slowly, day by day, the flower itself entered our world, closed, like hands that captured a moth, then open, as eyes open, and the amaryllis, seeing us, was somehow undiscouraged. It stands before us now as we eat our soup; you pour a little of your drinking water into its saucer, and a few crumbs of fragrant earth fall onto the tabletop.

Lavenderish dusk strapped for stays, pomegranates under the rubberband chucked for a glass Oz, letdown splayed by the pillar-shelves to page upon the Ottoman: his talk has wrought suit amid citrus gapes and pall dunked in the bowl and grated sage or cleaved clear paleo-pines. Postgeist, upcast California upon weed, what banker yields so fragrant a cant as this vagrant cant?

A garland to fend off the dizzies. A garland to keep the quinsy at bay. March closes the seeded umbilicus. April opens the musty secundina. Equinox the half-melt rot. Easter the thin asquintable light.

Down in a green and shady bed, A modest violet grew, Its stalk was bent, it hung its head, As if to hide from view. And yet it was a lovely flower, Its colours bright and fair; It might have graced a rosy bower, Instead of hiding there, Yet there it was content to bloom, In modest tints arrayed; And there diffused its sweet perfume, Within the silent shade. Then let me to the valley go, This pretty flower to see; That I may also learn to grow In sweet humility.

The tulips make me want to paint, Something about the way they drop Their petals on the tabletop And do not wilt so much as faint, Something about their burnt-out hearts, Something about their pallid stems Wearing decay like diadems, Parading finishes like starts, Something about the way they twist As if to catch the last applause, And drink the moment through long straws, And how, tomorrow, they’ll be missed. The way they’re somehow getting clearer, The tulips make me want to

On Turning One Down with the Plow, in April, 1786 Wee, modest, crimson-tippèd flow'r, Thou's met me in an evil hour; For I maun crush amang the stoure Thy slender stem: To spare thee now is past my pow'r, Thou bonie gem. Alas! it's no thy neibor sweet, The bonie lark, companion meet, Bending thee 'mang the dewy weet Wi' spreck'd breast, When upward-springing, blythe, to greet The purpling east. Cauld blew the bitter-biting north Upon thy early, humble birth; Yet cheerfully thou glinted forth Amid the storm, Scarce rear'd above the parent-earth Thy tender form. The flaunting flowers our gardens yield High shelt'ring woods an' wa's maun shield: But thou, beneath the random bield O' clod or stane, Adorns the histie stibble-field Unseen, alane. There, in thy scanty mantle clad, Thy snawie-bosom sun-ward spread, Thou lifts thy unassuming head In humble guise; But now the share uptears thy bed, And low thou lies! Such is the fate of artless maid, Sweet flow'ret of the rural shade! By love's simplicity betray'd And guileless trust; Till she, like thee, all soil'd, is laid Low i' the dust. Such is the fate of simple bard, On life's rough ocean luckless starr'd! Unskilful he to note the card Of prudent lore, Till billows rage and gales blow hard, And whelm him o'er! Such fate to suffering Worth is giv'n, Who long with wants and woes has striv'n, By human pride or cunning driv'n To mis'ry's brink; Till, wrench'd of ev'ry stay but Heav'n, He ruin'd sink! Ev'n thou who mourn'st the Daisy's fate, That fate is thine—no distant date; Stern Ruin's ploughshare drives elate, Full on thy bloom, Till crush'd beneath the furrow's weight Shall be thy doom.

Margaret, in happy hour Christen'd from that humble flower Which we a daisy call! May thy pretty name-sake be In all things a type of thee, And image thee in all. Like it you show a modest face, An unpretending native grace;— The tulip, and the pink, The china and the damask rose, And every flaunting flower that blows, In the comparing shrink. Of lowly fields you think no scorn; Yet gayest gardens would adorn, And grace, wherever set. Home-seated in your lonely bower, Or wedded—a transplanted flower— I bless you, Margaret!