Heart Flowers
Inside your heart, he says
Are flowers, one for each person
You love.
I imagine his heart is a grove
Alight with blossoms;
Every stranger on the street
A seedling.
I have never known someone
So eager to love,
His soul a fertile landscape,
Thriving.
Sometimes I think the soil
Of my heart is deficient;
How many buds, drooping,
How many leaves curling in
Upon themselves.
But somewhere in my heart
rooted deep and stretching
It’s magnificent inflorescence
To be warmed by the sun
Is a flower the exact shade of aster
As my son’s eyes.
I think no flower
Has ever known a more attentive gardener,
Has ever been more well-loved,
More well-tended,
Or more beautiful.
Day Seventeen: I asked my son, again, what I should write about.
“LOVE!”
“That’s broad. What kind of love?”
“FAMILY LOVE!!”
The idea of heart flowers is actually something he came up with when he was four; I absolutely love the idea, and this is not really a worthy use of the concept, I don’t think, but I hope to return to it sometime.
