The Way Flowers Persist

Today's post is about the way flowers persist, the way beauty persists. In spite of, well let's just say, everything. 

I present to you two poems to convince. 

The first is by Linda Pastan from her book, Traveling Light. Flowers, everywhere. 

Flowers 

by Linda Pastan

The deep strangeness
of flowers in winter–

the orange of clivia
or this creamy white rose

in its stoneware
vase, while outside

another white
like petals drifting down.

Is it real?
a visitor asks,

meaning the odd magenta
orchid on our sill

unnatural
as makeup on a child.

It's freezing all around us – 
salt cold on the lips,

the flinty blacks and grays
of January in any northern city,

and flowers
everywhere:

in the supermarket
by cans of juice,

filling the heated stalls
near the river–

secular lilies engorged
with scent,

notched tulips, crimson
and pink, ablaze

in the icy
corridors of winter.

This next poem was published in The New Yorker many years ago. I'm not sure what I have faith in some days, but I have faith in the last line of this poem. 

Cloudless Snowfall

by Franz Wright

Great big flakes like white ashes
at nightfall descending
abruptly everywhere
and vanishing
in this hand like the host
on somebody’s put-out tongue, she
turns the crucifix over
to me, still warm
from her touch two years later
and thank you,
I say all alone—
Vast whisp-whisp of wingbeats
awakens me and I look up
at a minute-long string of black geese
following low past the moon the white
course of the snow-covered river and
by the way thank You for
keeping Your face hidden, I
can hardly bear the beauty of this world.

In winter, we will invent flowers if we have to, seeing it in falling petals of snow. And if you are a lazy gardener, such as I am, you will see how a pot of roses left outdoors will still persist in showing us beauty, even after a cold snap, even after months of carrying the burden of the weight of snow.