Tulips At Thanksgiving

Of course its Thanksgiving Weekend in America. I nearly forgot. Its high spring here in Australia. We had three days of ninety degree temperatures this week and then a humid rain yesterday and today. On my walk this morning I saw four cockatoos, several green parrots and a garden filled with tulips. It doesn't feel like Thanksgiving at all.
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Maybe you're already dreading the winter? I know how that feels after 8 years in Denver. But fear not, the Earth will spin on its ellipse and your spring will come.
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Meantime here's a lovely poem from an old flatmate of mine, Alicia Stallings, originally published in Poetry Magazine.

Tulips
by A.E. Stallings

The tulips make me want to paint,
Something about the way they drop
Their petals on the tabletop
And do not wilt so much as faint,


Something about their burnt-out hearts,
Something about their pallid stems
Wearing decay like diadems,
Parading finishes like starts,


Something about the way they twist
As if to catch the last applause,
And drink the moment through long straws,
And how, tomorrow, they’ll be missed.


The way they’re somehow getting clearer,
The tulips make me want to see—
The tulips make the other me
(The backwards one who’s in the mirror,


The one who can’t tell left from right),
Glance now over the wrong shoulder
To watch them get a little older
And give themselves up to the light.