There is nothing as frightening as a rose
opening, vainly staring down eternity
for a silent second. A feeling deep in your stomach.
(There is no need to waste your tears)

Flowers must endure only briefly the cold insistence
of midnight, calling out the stars and moon,
before being cut. We use them
to cloak death like the golden tapestry
that covered the pharaohs;

to soothe our worldly grief.
They are strangely at home
there, beginning to sag, their color draining
back into the stem from where it sprang,
into the murky water of the vase,
its coffin. No longer will it know the wind
or rain, shinny on its pedals
in the evening,
gone

Like the corpse that leaves its spouse,
left to endure the incessant attempts
to comfort and dreaming of being reunited.
A motion toward sanity,
singing softly