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)
