Glorious Cape Canaveral Soprano

Modern poetry modern verse contemporary poetry contemporary verse modern poem contemporary poem

He finds himself unable to construe

The dead gardenia plant among the stone

Grave markers any other meaning’s true

Construction than a symbol of life’s moan

And doom and degradation.  Where the blooms

Would be, the shrivelled leaves and stems betray

Thrills’ hopes.  The dead within their buried rooms

Are silent as they were that sunshine day

When Wilma forced the planting and this state

That followed.  She has fallen too.  Her song

More splendid than gardenias met the hate

Of death and now lies where loved hearts lie wrong.

  The only items that are as they ought

    To be are tombstones in the crabgrass plot.

[This is the tombstone Wilma wanted the gardenia planted by.]

©  Phillip Whidden