We write too many poems about flowers

and not enough poems about the fake lilacs that collect dust on my great-aunts egg-shaped dining room table. Three places ready for Mary, Flo, and Joan are set with the white and pink fine china plates even though Joan was buried in Saint Catherine’s cemetery last cold April.

not enough poems about the fake blue roses in the vase on the reception desk at the maternity ward at Saint Joseph’s hospital. The ones with the fake dew drops on them as if they have just persisted through a rain.

not enough poems about the fake sunflowers at the Lutheran Nursing Home next to the piano that no one ever plays because it’s locked. The one that George Schaffer comes to every morning tugs at the petals of to check if it’s alive only touch the scratchy surface of plastic petals.