Flowers

Flowers

Someone I know is getting married,

and I am composing poems about flowers, hyacinths and lilacs as if there were something intrinsically bridal about these outgrowths of the plant flaunting itself, attracting insects and birds to the exact and fragrant place of pollen.

And someone I love is dying. Flowers will be wanted for her too, lilies perhaps, though all that is required is a handful of good dirt on a plain pine box, and all the funeral bouquets will be sent to a hospital somewhere, where the sick will wake

one morning to a confusion of scents, I wonder, partly in innocence, why everything has to mean something else, and I marvel at how we comfort ourselves and each other with the fragile symptoms of beauty, with petals

of roses for love, with snowdrops for hope, whether we are setting out on a journey or simply waving goodbye from the dock as the ship pulls out and the wake of tossed flowers floats for a little while, delicate as foam on the water, before it disappears.

Linda Pastan