is the one thing involving flowers
I’m reasonably good at. Daybreak 
finds me in the yard with my hose, 
attentive as a bee. What a pleasure 
to choose “Mist” on my watering gun
and drift like a cloud above the roses.
Last month my sister died, a storm
of lightning in her brain. And now
this news that someone who once
was the object of all my bouquets
is spending her final summer.
Each day brings more bad weather,
which is another way of saying
I’m in my sixties. But here, in the frail
September morning, my hand tipped in fog,
the flowers lift their faces to me
with bright, mystifying questions,
and for once I have an answer.
 

—from the Rattle Chapbook Prize winner, Cheap Motels of My Youth