FLOWER-HEAD

 

Such a flowerhead bobbing in the breeze,

flitting and capricious, as I am,

I know it will soon be the time

when the pollen count

gets knocked unconscious

by the drumming of the many-handed rain.

 

If I were a rose, an actual, redolent rose,

that poked its nose through stolid concrete,

I might waste poesis such as this

on the breeze again and again.

 

Standing as I am, only a man,

I remark how even water leaves

the hypothalamus an indelible stain.

 

Then I think how the names

on the graves will not

be washed away, nor read,

and devote my soul to the end of all pain.