When first I was given the one lily
chaperoned by two green pods,
I strapped myself in like a cosmonaut
to absorb the whoosh of seeing
its pods open one by one.
Because what mind cooked up such extravagance,
spot speckle pinkstripe smudge—
someone call a fire truck
somebody call a bomb squad
somebody call a pharmacist
for a Valium prescription.
Because the beauty of the world is soon to perish;
everything is burning up too fast—
lily number two goes off like a bottle rocket, leaving
the bloom and withering on the same stiff stalk
and the heart torn between them as the petals drop.
Oh, I might have asked for a simple daisy, something
to inflict a subtler vanishing…
without all this ocular pyromania
and the long-bones-dressed-up-in-a-coffin
scent. Plus there’s one pod yet to detonate,
which the yellow pollen grains are trying to defuse
by lying scattered on the table,
precisely scattered on the wooden table
in a manner calibrated to this trapezoid of winter light.