Flowers head South for the winter
leave us with bare gardens and frozen fingers.
In Sarasota, for example, I saw the ones
that had escaped us,
sneaked out, even as we watched them.
There they were, decking streets with their glory.
Don’t blame them:
It’s an instinct to be emulated
So as with aging
it comes to one easily.
We flap our ways away
from flagging fortune
thus rising above stratospheres of iciness.
Want to get down there
on those subtropical beaches
and chirp
with your fellow flowers
in the sunlight
in that sweet, if necessarily Southern, syrup