Poem: The Character of Flowers
Can it be said (with certainty or not) about the things that grow?:
There, see it! That’s (fill in the blank) incarnate!
They do not feel, we suppose.
So is it not somewhat fatuous, silly as a schoolgirl discovering the pulse
Of a bass guitar limning the rhythm of adolescence,
To call wisteria wistful.
To detect melancholia in a lily.
Persistence in petunias
Gentility in geraniums?
Yet to abjure the silent screams of the impatiens and hibiscus and roses
Is to deny their collective wish
To flourish
Tall and ever skyward,
Like colorful immigrants determined to make something of themselves
In a new land.
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