a elegy to a box of flowers stems 
or the story of a wedding

each morning the flower shop below us
leaves stems of cut flowers 
in piles on the curb. they sleep 
in long cardboard boxes like coffins
to be taken away by the garbage me. 
green truck taking green stems.
the boxes are the same boxes
the flowers arrived in when they were bright 
& still blooming. carnations & roses 
& sunflowers & daffodils & lillies.
i have begun to imagine a factory of flowers
where a machine constructs each face.
there are tools to create 
the wavy edge of each petal 
& to fill them with light floral smells. 
sometimes i'm not sure what to make 
of everything i observe. the details
come like fragments of story. 
do the stems go to rot 
in one of the great landfills?
do they become thin slivers of ghost
walking around in search of their visages.
do they linger outside my home 
peering in the flower shop window?
they see a woman arranging their once-faces 
into beautiful bouquets for a wedding.
it seems around here 
someone is always getting married 
& they always need flowers. 
where do all these people come from?
how did they learn to love each other enough
to hire flowers to worship them?
most importantly, would flowers marry each other
if they could? i can see vases 
each with two flowers. the flowers whispering
about the bold short future. 
i am closer to a flower than a human.
rooting through the garbage there,
i touch the stems in their burials.
they are still damp 
from whatever water they drank last.
my feet are wet too. 
i was drinking from a gutter.
my face was coming apart in petals 
as i pretened tomorrow morning i would 
run away from my street & become something else.
on the other side of the moon 
there is a heaven for flowers.
i am convinced of this at least.
i walk around the block three times
before i feel at peace.
there is a slight wind threating 
to blow away all the stems.
i tell the wind to take me.
i could get married to a trash bag
when it's brave enough 
to danced across a street. 
sitting on a bench. i cut the heads off flowers 
inside my heart. i leave my stems 
with the others.