For Sharon

Sharon’s Daisies



As fresh as fucking daisies, Sharon,
that’s how you described them.
You were at a party with young
women in long summer dresses.
It came to you as you looked
into a mirror, the daisy thing.

Let us celebrate our dark laughter,
our knowing, our acknowledged status
as ex-daisies. I propose a toast
to the loosened thigh of advancing
years. Let’s drink to the anticipated
droop of eyelids, to the ever-downward
inclination of the female form.

I suppose we’re expected to know
the names of all the flowers.
On my kitchen table, virginal
white petals are spread, arranged
like a platter of hors d’oeuvres
at a sweet sixteen party.
Into my chlorinated swimming pool,
shameless red petals fall,
they drift unabashed, tiny red boats
on a rippling surface.
In my garden, a flower grows
which is obviously nothing more
than a veil of powdered pink dust
lustfully suspended in a milky haze.
Is it possible they could even have names?
oh, such foolish fluff, stuff of youth,
that’s how effing fresh they are.

Of course, they must have real names,
phyla, genera, species, but they’re barely there,
really, transparent little nothings.
So let’s call them all daisies, Sharon,
every honeysuckled blossom,
every perfect unpicked bloom,
we can call them anything we want,
so let’s say what we mean:
beautiful fucking daisies, bowing
and waving in the perfumed wind.

published Lullwater Review, Vol X, No. 2, Spring 2000