Two Poems

 

Daisies Don't Tell

Buttercups tell—
chin up, you either like butter
or you don't.

Daisy petals you can pluck
all day, and come
no closer to learning

whether he loves you
or loves you not.

Bring that up with him.

Daisies keep secret
many things we might wish
to know more about—

the hour a storm will break,

what their roots have read
of the stress in earth's
underlying tectonic plates;

how it is to live one season.

 

In The Nick Of Time

Rain arrives, like a gift
delivered late, the day after your birthday.

Rain two days earlier

would have greatly benefited a brown lawn,
and the geraniums.

We shouldn't second-guess.

Firemen come as soon as they can get there;
they too have lives.

“I love you” is better said late, than never.

Rebuttals are more eloquent
in retrospect, a week after they were needed.

Now the lawn will need mowing
again. The geraniums perk up, bless them.

We should mind our own unfinished business.