Of Flowers


Around doubt,
respect.

Around love,
roses,

debt.
Much industrial

share-sweat
has brought them

to you. Frothed
Persian light.

The salesman’s
semen-sweet fête.

Let down, then,
your beautiful

tabernacle
said I (& Blake).

God?
Profit

margin?
This hint

of mould
your undoing.

Love?
Spare me.

There’s
so little

time
left.


Questions and Answers

What inspired “Of Flowers”?

I think of this as a coy rewriting of Andrew Marvel’s “To His Coy Mistress”. As in the last answer, a love poem.

What poetic techniques did you use in “Of Flowers”?

Evasion. Metaphor. Assonance. Consonance. Word and phrase puns. Sculpture.


This poem “Of Flowers” originally appeared in Writers Talking. Spec. issue of Canadian Literature 183 (Winter 2004): 12.

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