A Poem

Deadheading

Each clump
of pinched blooms
on the concrete,
like burial mounds
or funeral pyres,
leaves evidence
of its parting:

the imperfect cut,
the diseased stem
now yellowed thin—
the week by week mistakes
of disintegrating matter.

Between one last
green stem still pulsing
and a new leaf’s bend
back toward earth,
a pink head pushes

from sudden absence.
Forced, it tries to open,
color its thin petals amber,
until giving in
to autumn—nearly

luminous, almost
numinous and in danger
of becoming more than us.