3 Letters to Flowers

Ok. Here's another one nobody's going to publish. Just doesn't "fit" any journal I've seen. All suggestions welcome, as long as they're not offered by anonymous in Chinese, selling sex soap.

3 Letters to Flowers
1.

Dear Frangipani

It has come to my attention that I have no idea.
It was the cat jumped on my lap
top and typed
"Dear Frangipani,"
I am honestly and sincerely
bereft.

Are you a withering plant in the desiccated
and all too oft poorly
tilled soil of my memory?

Behind curtains at a launching taking notes
like Laertes
mistaken for a Mimosa, once
on a melon-colored couch
in an intemperate season?

Was it you in the flower truck I rear-ended
whilst listening to Idiot Boys in stereo
on my I-pod?

Fog shakes her petticoats --
so much soot :
I suffocate
from temporal afflictions.
(Weather is such a distraction!

Ah, but this could be the case:

A manic moon in Samosa
under which I mistook you
for a Mimosa; yes,
after a quintet of champagne flutes
and an overwhelming
of oranges
tickled rudely the vulnerable palms of your leaves,
expecting you to curl for me, sweet girl!

No doubt you refused affectations.
and thus I am compelled to write Dear
Frangipani, naturally
not presuming to call
you my

Dear Frangipani,
will you ever forgive me what needs regret
assuming the need
will I ever recognize
what I have
not forgotten?
-- assuming it was
you?

2.

Hiya hiya my dear Hyacynth!
It's been a while since we were overcome.
Blame Violetta.

Remember when we read her diary among the frongs and wept
amongst the wisteria?

I hear your piccolo voice,
and yes, it could've been the rice wine
not to mention cow
bells and scent of hay at midnight.

That's what you'd say now, wouldn't you? Yin insisted,
knowing I'd fall into a hole of non-wakefulness and not
notice you and Hang on the divan, on another plane
but a slow one,
could be local.

I was reading something incomprehensible and still
don't know how I ended up
in Madagascar
without my purse.

I have a recurring vision of your legs
sublime and full
of awe but then I think I could be wrong
I am always thinking of the Eiffel Tower
when I was Rimbaud.



3.

Bonjour Buttercup!

You keep awakening in my dreams,
opening up so sudden yellow I startle at your face.

When we met I had eggs Florentine on mine.

It was over breakfast at the sanatorium in a village near Zurich,
remember? I was visiting my mum discreetly
your betrothed carnation was coughing into his tea,
which (understandably) upset a delicate sprout like you,
who burst into dew.

Mum was beside herself, tossing eggs, in sport, at the end
of her stem,
the poor old horsefly.

I recall the look you gave me, all mirth
amongst the prudish gladiolas
in their pots.
It lingers still.

I tender the tiny petal you proffered before we parted
by the willows;
concerned that it might have been essential,

I prostrated too much, perhaps,
but you fluttered and laughed again,
kissing me like a warm snowflake.

(copyright Carol Novack 2010)