Why do you droop so low?
One would think that the Creator
might have provided a sturdier stalk
to support the mass of such an explosive
bloom of pink and magenta and
white at the end of every May.

Is it because you know
your fate will be to end up in a coffee can
wrapped in foil at gramma’s gravestone
on Decoration Day, among the plots
of long dead soldiers, nameless stillborn infants
and so many whose inscriptions and memory
the weather and time have erased?
Is it too much to bear,
all this weight of grief and loss?
Or is it just because last night

it rained?