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Posts Tagged ‘bouquet’

The Arrangement

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on March 30, 2026| 6 Comments »


 
 
Because touch is one way we offer praise, 
this morning I touch my ears 
to the see-sawing song of birds 
in the tree beside me. I still myself
to focus on their song, and they stop 
singing, as if to tease. I touch my ears 
to the silence where the song is not. 
Touch the warm tones of wind chimes 
stirred by a breeze I barely feel. 
Touch the hum of the cars
and the growl of a motorcycle I’d rather 
shut out. I think of how my grandmother 
used grass, even weeds in her flower arrangements. 
She taught me you could make anything beautiful.
I try to stop slandering the traffic noise
and gather it into an audible bouquet complete
with birds, chimes, silence, my breath. 
How to make the unwelcome welcome? 
How to hold tension in ways that compliment? 
All morning, all day, I practice opening 
to what isn’t easy to love. I make a vase
of the moment. Add all the sound that’s here. 
So much I’d rather not to listen to. 
I think of my grandmother. I try to find 
new ways to hear.  

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Life Lesson

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on September 9, 2022| 6 Comments »

Though the old snap peas dangle
dried and yellow on the dying vine,
and the lettuce, once tender,
has bolted and toughened,
and the kale, now blue,
is aphid-ridden,

the calendula, cosmos,
nasturtiums and marigolds
are in full-bloom and generous.
I fill the house with vases,
each bouquet a celebration
of great change.
It thrills me. Oh, summer,
you die so beautifully.

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Saying Thank You

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on March 17, 2021| 2 Comments »


 
 
I want to bring to the doorstep of your heart
a giant bouquet of soft-petalled words,
a lavish bouquet of gratitudes
grown from seed in which each bloom
remembers each time
I watered it, encouraged it,
pulled the weeds from around its stem.
I want to have amended the soil
in which these appreciations grew
with the mycelium of devotion,
the dark compost of love.
It matters, the ways we say thank you.
Those two words disappear from the air
in less than a second,
so is it any wonder, when you
with your love have changed me forever,
that I want to bring you
a whole garden of gratefulnesses
no, a whole field of eternal thank yous
in which every flower is astonishingly open
and the perfume fills
every room in your heart.
 
 

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Bouquet: Six Spring Haiku

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , on March 16, 2012| 8 Comments »

March sun so warm
I almost believe those yellow flowers
are real.

*

Apricot trees
in first bloom, white and white,
but that is somewhere else.

*

I wish I had
no occasion to send tulips
to room 109.

*

Under microscopes
mutant cells blossom
forget me nots

*

She hands me
a dandelion—an hour later
gold still in my hand.

*

Scent of spring—
even the shadows
grow buds.

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