The Different Forms of Flowers
By Tony D'Arpino

Pin and thrum in daylife woods and shadow field
Pin you know stuck with a white stiff silver pin
From Nana's cloth pincushions tomato hedgehog
Or strawberry filled with tiny working-stones
Which sharpen the thread-writer's tools
Thrum the old weaver said from his variegated perch
Are those stray ends of threads hanging off the loom
Like the tight rings of pollen bearing anthers
Waiting for the perfect legs or wings
To carry the seasoned chant among the sexes

Two different forms of flowers and a third emblem
Of a picnic lunch abandoned by the green man
And the white woman a daymoon pausing in the sky
For a bouquet of trees gathered in the meadow
Awake from a dream of sepal lace in sepia
Glistening spoons rattling in their apostle rack
In a dark Victorian passageway which ends
In the darker spiral of an old Victrola horn
Graced by the creamy spiral of a giant conch