Negative Capability Press Poetry Blog

1

My Amaryllis

Edwin Arlington Robinson's old man
Dug a grave in the woods
For his old Amaryllis to lay.
But amaryllis' are only one type of flower,
So where do the azaleas go when they die?

Do camellias have some second home for the winter?
Do they begin to pack unseen bags
As their peddles wilt and fall to the ground?

Do they ponder whether to stay?

What too of the pink silk from my crepe myrtles
Or the flowers of my magnolia?
Or, any of the many other blossoms of beauty
That spring to our lives
Only to fade from thought.

What about Mary of Muscatine?
She too was a colorful bloom
Rescued from a drowning car in the 30's
To meet me forty years later.

She brightened the eyes
And the imagination of my young life.
She taught my childhood lessons on canvas,
And outlined beauty through her brush by hand.
But then she vanished before I could ask,

Am I still her student now that her season has
many times passed?

What rings louder in my ears
Than all the traffic outside
Is the same question I have of flowers:

Where did she go when she died?

Does one dig graves for flowers
For their blooms, and my memories to fall?
Or, can I only try to capture
That vanishing image in my mind.
Clinging to it with an eyes closed smile,
But, too slow to notice it fade?

Where do flowers go when they die?

Perhaps I should go into the woods like Edwin
And ask them before the season gone.