photo: ralph murre
Waste
by
Donna Hilbert
To
change the water, I pluck
last
week’s tulips from their vase,
but
the turbans unhinge in my hands,
orange
cups upend in the sink,
with
underside bands
of
stem-colored green revealed.
A
still life subject, I think:
tulips in their
disrepair.
My
love is a painter. Daily I tell him,
paintings are everywhere
but poems, my dear, are
rare.
I
am not a painter,
so
I drop the old petals into a sack
with
over-ripe cheese, uneaten fruit
and
down the back stairs I march
the
whole tableau to the trash.
~
first published in Tears in the Fence
