in an empty town
haunted by gloom, by a chilly
desperation in the soft damp
sighs of air
where silver pools
mirroring the lost dreams
fill, flow, lakes of glassy tears
over boulevards of broken bricks
the quiet hopeless buildings
hunched against themselves,
the world
crumpled in defeat,
no longer listen, no longer care
the last fragile remnants of
thin fragile gossamer paint
and tunnels etched by age
on the rusted doors the
rickety porches
beyond these things,
beyond the gray wheat fields where
life once grew,
through a forest dim shadowy deep
by a stream trickling
whispering morosely by
a blossom,
tiny pink perfection
struggles to grow

beneath brambles, heavy black with despair
it strives and strains for light
skinny stem frost-green young innocent
pale pearly petals aspiring
to be something more
she would be graceful, elegant, a dancer,
slender and bright and lovely,
a thing of beauty not
some scrawny weed by a concrete
ditch
and the girl
yes! she is a girl, tall, pretty, pale
or is she
a flower, a bloom as beautiful
as the young flower
wishes
to be?
no, she is indeed a girl,
soaked, dripping rain and
tears from the ends of her
flowing black hair,
down and over the thin
white gown, petals,
festooned with irises, pansies, zinnias, roses,
saturated with despair
the tulips washed from her cheeks,
her lavender eyes dead with the horrible sadness
she does not see, does not feel the little flower’s
awe
merely closes her blank eyes
fills her pockets with stones
as unfeeling as she has become
violet, lily, azalea to rock
and the wind seems to whisper stop stop don’t
but she spreads her arms, a suicidal swan,
and the tiny flower screams
and screams as the girl
is swept
away
her fire extinguished
for want of beauty, goodness,
one sweet little flower of her own in the endless rain
the cruel water, ablaze
with deep red, the girl’s
nectar spilled upon the rocks
surges up, one last time
claims the little devastatingly
beautiful heartbroken posy
and she, uncaring
allows herself to be borne away

and somewhere,
not far,
a baby girl chokes to death,
her tiny light gone from the world forever

each flowers in their own respects
all would have been
radiant lovely a brilliant flame in the world’s dark
and all, all washed away into the horrid flood
all all of these
flowers in the rain