Queen Anne’s Lace

An elegant name for what is often
considered a weed. Wild carrot. White flower.
It recalls a runner my mother placed
on the dining room table for holidays.

A red drop from a wine glass.

Tending the Garden

Irises in my mother’s garden bloomed
for Mother’s Day and I brought them
to my own garden where they bloom
later in May in all the colors
of childhood past, present and hopefully future.

Black Velvet

a black velvet petunia

Her neck rises from the white lace
necklaced with a black velvet band soft
as her pink and purple garden petunias.
Syllables of velvet from a tender perennial.
Flowers blackened by Death still blooming annually.

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Emily created as a young girl (before the poetry) a herbarium in which she collected 424 flowers from the Amherst region. She called them “beautiful children of spring,” and arranged them in a 66-page large leather-bound album with labels of the common names and sometimes the official Linnaean ones. All are in her elegant handwriting. I don’ think she had a black petunia in the book, but I think she would have liked the flower.

Emily’s portrait with her black velvet band

A poem by Emily – #334

All the letters I can write
Are not fair as this—
Syllables of Velvet—
Sentences of Plush,
Depths of Ruby, undrained,
Hid, Lip, for Thee—
Play it were a Humming Bird—
And just sipped—me—

The Queen

Some of my mother’s irises always bloom
for Mother’s Day – she never cut them
but a wind-broken stem would be vased
though it saddened her looking so alone.
Flying white standards, bearded with purple falls —
the closest she ever came to royalty.

Royal Storm bearded iris

Out of Season

 

Calendar autumn. Morning winter. Frost on windshields.

But in this room, spring hydrangea  blooms

from a greenhouse or a somewhere spring.

Unthinking, it doesn’t feel out of season,

misplaced in time and space.                                  I do.

Dahlias

Vase of Dahlias, 1883, Claude Monet

 

 

 

 

 

I cut dahlias to fill the vase

so that they would greet you today

when you returned from the doctor’s office –

 

but you didn’t notice them until now.

 

You said they looked sad and wilted.