Death has a stench,

While life is in love with flowers.

Flowers at a wake  may belong, but quickly cloy.

Their perfume knows the petals have been cut,

And all the rest is seeming.

Flowers long for the light.

They wait at the very edge of day;

And in the dawn embrace the dew to life.

They take and turn those diamond drops,

That jewelry of night

To warmer fragrance and to brighter light.

To thank their sister Sun,

They free her prismed bounty,

Unlocking bolts of daffodill,

Then roads of rampant red,

Hemmed in but held by the gentle lilac's

Pale and so sweet purple hue.

Rose and rhododendron,

Though Envious of a lilly quietly lapping up the light,

Nod in fresh  obeisance to the day.

Others may shed lonely tears,

But flowers only laugh to be alive.