Flowers I Have Culled

Flowers, flowers I have culled

from the garden of your disaffection.

Small they are,
yet poignant—
they offer a wistful air,
as if afraid to breathe.

Yes, I have culled flowers,
flowers from the garden of your disaffection,
and I have put them in the sun,
to dry into memory.

Small and sad,
vague and rootless,
I could never get near enough
to find the center
so to transplant them
into more fertile soil.

So the only recourse
to their withering
is to cull the flowers
and to dry them,
like the tears I have shed,
to preserve their essence,
yet let them fade
into a less painful memory.

Perhaps I should walk away,
but there is yet a tristesse beauty
that draws me to care, and so
I continue to cull the flowers,
if only to preserve a beauty
that might have opened to the light.

© 2011 by Elisabeth T. Eliassen