Flower Poems for Spring

Daiva's Flower

or A Japanese Gangster Paints Flowers

In Takeshi Kitano’s Fireworks

Sunflower lions smile

bright yellow and green

with infinite centers of seeds

like grains of sand through a microscope.

Grained gold,

speckled with green

sunflowers beam

stretching upward in summer heat.

They lined our garden once

shading lettuce

shooting fire above the leaves.

I don’t remember if we roasted the kernels

but I can taste the sun

when memory says we did

Salty crackle, sweet crumble

like a coffee cake topping

I sometimes smell

when walking across sandy soil

where sunflowers roar.

Aunt Audrea’s Flower

In pictures you smile down at West Virginia ravines:

New River Gorge

Grand View

Or wave from burnished leaf-covered hills

but your face shines brightest among roses.

I can see you blushing pinks and reds

in Ritter Park’s rose garden. Or it might

have been Cypress Gardens with its clock

tower and choreographed water skiers.

In memory, you sit on a stone wall

along rows of velvet rose bushes--

A flower yourself,

your gardenia dress dances,

its full skirt keeping time in the breeze,

rhythmic crinoline bursting like Florida hibiscus.

Sitting on a cool patio

smelling sulfur from salty sprinklers

(water for hard green spiked grasses)

I watch you laugh,

your head pulled back in joy

your eyes smiling at us all,

And,

at least in memory,

we all smile back

wishing we too had such perfect roses to share.