Cut Flowers
 
Because I want the blooms to last,
I scald the stems
of roses, hold an orange poppy to a match
until the milk burns in the flame.
It’s an art they call conditioning.
I crush the base of a chrysanthemum—
the heads keep blooming, rootless,
like the flower heads that float
on Chinese screens.
 
I add sugar to the vase, a tablespoon
to ease the shock.
Who knows how a cut stem enters water?
Seen through glass, this green stalk
seems to shift as it hits
the line between one element
and the next: it’s a trick of light, sometimes
I’ll walk into a windowed room
and can’t remember why.

                               Mary Cornish
                               from Red Studio

I’ve quoted this poem out of context. It comes from a collection of poems that revolve around the death of a spouse. When you read the poem with this in mind, the poem as whole, starting with the image of a blossom being held to the flame, becomes a metaphor for searing pain. Besides the art of conditioning, there are other arts to be studied and practiced—the art of surviving and that in turn includes the art of using language to convey the experience. How difficult to speak of the grief directly, but metaphor allows a poet to evoke it. From the beginning of the poem, imagery of being cut, rootless, shocked accumulates till we get to the final image when we see the stalk shift as it hits the water. That’s when the heart of the reader feels the shock, and into that opened heart we receive the longing and aimless grief of the woman who has wandered into a windowed room, seeking that which can no longer be seen or held. Through the glass, we see her standing solitary at the center. The chamber of our heart becomes the open chamber of hers.

So much grief is kept invisible because we feel we must hide it, or because there is no adequate means of expressing it. We busy ourselves with mundane tasks, creating an illusion of order and continuity. This poem shows us a woman arranging flowers, but its methodical calm belies what is to come. By the end, the cut flowers are associated with excruciating loss, the poem a testament to the power of metaphor not just to connect one situation with another but to merge, for a moment, the hearts of strangers. Perhaps it’s a trick of the light. It’s a feat we can’t quite explain.