Ars Poetica

In our family, no one loves flowers

more than my mother and my son,

who choose the brightest flowers for me

though they’re the ones die quickest,

which is why I don’t like flowers.

More akin to me than flowers are spiders.

In my mother’s late summer garden

before anything has gone to seed,

one spider bundles up the silk

and consumes her own web.

She does this so she can make another.