Like flowers in a slow conversation’s

eddy, he floats through his circular day.

Nothing’s amiss. Almost, as memory,

the pattern persists; almost as if he

whispers to someone who listens nearby.

Each flower’s petals fall, by troubled turns,

until the air is not enough to hold 

the incoherent world; and, like glass,

it shatters into the composting earth,

oblivious to its own slow demise.

The flower unfolds into its silence;

the swift flutter of bird song in the trees;

the rough caress of dry leaf on dry leaf;

the winter wind’s incessant pulse and pause;

are nothing to his flower’s petal’s fall.

(March 20, 2019)