OUR SECRET LANGUAGE
It’s true — I speak floriography
But I’m anything but fluent
I’m familiar with the basics
But struggle with the dialects
Victorian’s a starting place
But too moribund and out of date
To invest the time that it would take
To master its complexities
After all the years we’ve been together
We’ve built a flower language all our own
That sometimes conflicts with
Long accepted symbols and traditions
Those yellow roses I brought home from Trader Joe’s
Were not a veiled message of rejection
They symbolized a dozen tiny Suns
I knew would brighten up your rainy day
The lavender you bought at Lowe's
Was not a symbol of distrust
Just a scent you knew our daughter loves
A gift to say “these made me think of you”
The wildflowers that I pick
Are not because they’re free
They represent that country road
We walked down on our first date
The feelings we express with flowers
Cannot be found in any book
They are the stories that we tell
When words alone will not suffice
Frank Kelly
YESTERDAY WAS A LONG TIME AGO
I said please don’t ever buy me flowers
I don’t care about that
They’re expensive and all that
And I meant it
Truly.
I would much rather have a sweet note
Or a steamy poem
Like you always used to write.
Or a stroll down the path,
Hand in hand
With that hand that could make me swoon
With just a tickle of a finger in my palm
These weren’t like the tired old oh brother
of a bunch of red roses.
Obligatory hot house tokens
of supposed true love.
(Or at least the typical lusty hope
That something might come of this
With flowers involved.)
But the thing is
Now the notes don’t come anymore
And the fingers rarely fumble for mine
Along secret paths.
So some flowers every once in a while
Might still make me believe that you
Well, you know,
Things I used to
Believe
When no flowers were needed
And the hand could make me swoon
Sometimes I’d like to find him
And tell him about you.
And hope that one of you writes me a poem
Or picks me some daisies
Or at least buys me a hothouse waste of money
So I could believe again
And snuggle in
To the fragrance of
Extravagant waste
For extravagant love
Laurie Sitterding
DANDELIONS
As I watch my neighbor spraying his lawn to kill the dandelions,
I consider that to some, dandelions symbolize perseverance,
and are associated with wishes, transformation,
and the power to overcome hardship.
Their early flowering is a signal to me of rebirth after winter.
To some, a weed, because of its ability to thrive in difficult conditions.
As a child, my mother told me that blowing dandelion seedheads
was a time to make a wish.
I want to tell my neighbor this, but I know that to him, that is just a way
to make things worse. He wishes no one would ever blow the seeds,
and that I would spray my lawn and remove all my dandelions.
Oh, dandelions, your yellow flowering Sun and lunar silvery seed head
will be here long after my neighbor finishes his deadly spraying,
and long after both of us have gone to sleep for the longest of winters.
Charles Michaels
FLOWER POWER, IN FOUR SCENES
The grown-ups leave bodega bouquets near
the teddy bears and other plush animals
propped up against sturdy candle wax tubes,
all soon a tragic debris field of
astonished plastic eyes crying over wilted petals.
Those of sufficient means or wearying distance
scroll through images of arrangements organized by
size, shape, and intended proximity — wreath stands,
a floral coffin drape, a tasteful vase
to be carried home with the grief.
Somewhere even today questions about corsage placement
become urgent in the minds of prom
bound boys, as they circle the mall
parking lot with their mothers, whose own
calendared day of obligatory appreciation proved disappointing.
Yet the pathos of the tribute flower --
most silently present in my sister’s bedroom,
with its rose patterned wallpaper right angled
against a carpet of primrose buds never
trod upon by a varsity lettered hero.
Rob Friedman
ROSE AND OTHER NAMES
Names are important. They need to mean something.
Being unique or startling is not enough. Neither is cute
Or trendy. Parents need to realize the name they choose
One hundred years old. Everyone carries their name
As a gift, a burden, an embarrassment, a dated dullness
Or as a strong foundation that will never crumble.
Boys who are named David have a poet-king
To hold them up, a king like all of us, who made
Mistakes but never lost his courage or his faith.
Girls who are named for flowers have a life
Of fragrance, color and beauty to carry them
Through all the disappointments that come
With their gender, though some flower names
Are more resilient than others. A girl named
Daisy will have a childhood filled with sunshine,
Bouncy joy, honey and buzzing bees. But as she
Grows old, she may come to wish her parents had
Named her Iris—a crown of purple petals on a
Tall, straight back, like a priest celebrating the
Lenten mass, balanced on bulbs, secure in the
Earth, promising regeneration.
I am one of those girls with a flower name, and I
Will thank my parents forever for naming me after
The queen of flowers—the glorious rose. Roses have
Deep roots that demand the cold solitude of thought.
They also have warning thorns for those who hope
To hold a rose’s aroma hostage. And don’t expect a rose
To claim a single hue. Roses own the sunrise and every
Magenta dawn streaked with tendrils of pure gold.
The sunset is hers too, with violet and mauve mingling.
Then roses are in their glory as their faces reach up
In kinship with the sparkling white stars, the silvery
Moonbeams. We Rose women will cherish our names
To the end of our days. Respect us. Do not try to steal
Our secrets, and never touch us uninvited.
Rose Anna Higashi
FLOWERS
Richard Singer threw like a girl
and ran like a girl, and though all the girls
insisted he wasn’t a girl, the boys to a man
said he was. Richard said nothing but looked demurely upward
whenever teams were picked on the muddy schoolyard—
kids plucked up by their last names, one by one,
till only Singer, the girlish boy whom no one liked,
was left in the middle, the last seed in the pod, the lone
petal. “Flowers,” explained Miss Finkel in science class,
“have male and female parts in a single plant.”
Then she wrote the names of those parts on the blackboard:
Ovary (girls giggling in the back), Anther, Stamen, Pistil.
As Singer copied each word with a flourish, the boys
sat stiffly in their desks and gnawed their pencils.
Paul Hostovsky
AN OFFERING
You’ll watch these wildflowers wither in my hand,
If you should scorn them with disdainful view.
Accept them as they are; I wish that you
Could see with the pure eyes that once you had,
Before you wandered to this dying land
Where no one lets things grow, and you are tasked
To toil at an assembly line of masks
For all the acting parts you might have planned.
So there you are: reject these noxious weeds,
As some might call them, but if you possess
One instinct in you that is not processed
And mass produced, in this bouquet you’ll see,
Transfigured by that trace of natural power,
This noxious weed become a healing flower.
Lee Evans
RENEWAL
My finger swirls a circle
inside the heart of the tulips,
lilies, and narcissus gathering
pollen that I touch to my tongue.
The madness of spring bees.
Birds nesting, fledging young.
I am another year older,
slower, weaker, with bent limbs
and in need of renewal.
Brandon Baum
KEEPING THE FAITH
Before I’d read McCrae’s poem
Before I’d ever heard Okeeffe’s name
Or seen a real poppy
After the Civil and two World Wars
Which seemed so far away then but weren’t
During the ongoing Vietnam War
Whose images I saw on television each evening
It was late spring – and warm and sunny
In our little part of Brooklyn
Mom stood wearing her American Legion cap
It was perched at an angle atop her blond hair
And shaped like the small paper hats
Worn at the Nathan’s counters in Coney Island
She stood - smiling her Pink Velvet lipstick smile
Outside the new bank on Fifth and Ninth
Holding small bright red paper poppies
That were rubber-banded to a slotted can
The size of a small Ajax container
All of us far from the Middle East
far from East and Southeast Asia
Europe and dad’s Pacific
And far from Flanders Fields
Where trenches of broken earth
And broken, bloodied bodies fertilized the soil
Brought forth fields of vibrant red poppies
Blankets of remembrance
Above layers of blood and death
War’s price together with a soldier’s plea
To remember, remember
I can hear it
And too, the sound of the coins
falling into the can
And mom, ever gracious
Smiling at those who stopped
And those who didn’t
Terri J. Guttilla
THE PARADOX OF FLOWERS
There is a paradox held fast in the language of flowers,
enclosed in their unchanging impermanency
and it alarms me as it gives me hope.
Only plastic flowers last forever
but even the wildest blooms
are locked up for life
prisoners of their genes
held tight with no remission
no control of their destiny
unremitting repetition
following the seasonal ebb and flow.
Such is the paradox
of permanence
and impermanence
locked up in the language of flowers.
Lynn White
MYSTERIES OF THE ORIENT
Fond I am of freesia – love the scent
Lilac sends me back to salad days;
Lilies seem to make me think of lent
[still, their perfume puts me in a daze].
But if I were forced to chose just one,
Peonies I’d pick – so full and fat!
Love them so because they’re overdone
[fragrant where most roses have gone flat]
Dressed like fairies dancing in a grove;
Colors like chiffon draped on chiffon
Spe-cial-ly the palest: pink and mauve
[Sunset skies that just go on and on]
3 Full of secrets, these plush peonies...
3 and what’s more, they even speak Chinese!
Timea Deinhardt
WHITE ROSE, A FRESH START
The trail was abloom with wildflowers
this mid-day morning in May – a bike-hike trail
paved over old RR track from edge of town
(an auto body shop) to county jail. Blacktop
with yellow centerline, the trail’s woodland
margins bright with purple vetch, crimson clover,
blue lupine, yellow canary-broom and monkey-
flower, pale pink checker-bloom, and pinkish-red
twining snakelily. Almost underfoot, a single
white rose stepped-on, petals scattered
on pavement, the flower still fresh though ruined.
A garden blossom not of this woodland.
Who did it? Why? White rose for innocence,
reverence, a new beginning. So much for my
revery. This rose was saying something
very different. I looked around for an answer.
High on the cutbanks on either side of trail,
the lovely white fairy lanterns kept their lights,
their magic meanings to themselves.
Taylor Graham
ANEMONE……ANEMONE
I lay myself down to calm flowing tears
Among the mountain meadow’s royal lupine,
Fiery flames of paintbrush flickering in warm breezes
Below white domes of bear grass blooms.
I hear the wind whisper to me
Anemone…Anemone….Anemone
Daughter of the wind god,
Grief stricken tears of Adonis,
Blooming..
Pale yellow petals peek out from feathery leaves
Close to the ground. But when the
Field of colors fades into late summer brown
The anemone stalk stands tall, full
Head of white hair coiffed by the wind,
Clinging to hardened seed pods until the
First frost glistens in the morning sun.
As I rise from my slumber
The last tear drops to the ground,
A spring zephyr lifts my long white locks
Into the gentle hands of a love passed on.
Leslayann Schecterson
