Watermelon Poppies

The opium poppy is blooming now. I walk out in the early morning to cut its watermelon-colored flowers. Each of the four petals has a purple cheek, so the cut flowers combine stunningly with the campanula growing nearby, as well as the airy coral bells.

Indoors i arrange my bouquet and set it on the kitchen table so i can look at it frequently.

Tomorrow afternoon, sometime between 2:00 and 4:00, all the petals will suddenly drop, leaving nude seed pods standing in the vase and a ruffled skirt of coral petals cast carelessly on the table.

Impermanence.

More Rain

Rain
and more rain.
Water pouring from the sky
day after day
leaking all over my plans
to garden
and drenching bean plants
in the garden.

Drowning blackflies and mosquitoes by day;
grounding fireflies at night.

Summer beckons from the calendar,
but refrigerator weather
suspends us in this so-long spring.

We're all wet
if we think for a moment
the weather should be different
than it is.