BILL CARROLL
When you no longer love the flowers

When you no longer love the flowers
Then surely it must be time to go to bed
To slip into the warm bath of tear-fed waters
Like a ship set out upon the black and placid sea.

If the garden no longer holds your eye
Neither entrancing nor distracting with its circus of
Velvet Fox gloves, Hare's chiming bells, and snapping dragons
Then the whole world can offer no better hope.

Down your quivering cheeks, tears form rivulets
And my song can no longer soothe you, my child.
My voice has become like the empty fruit cases in autumn
Trampled and washed away by the storm.

When your eyes are no longer butterflies beckoned by the hues,
The intricate geometries and the perfumes of Eden
Then sleep, like a wiser death, must cradle and rock you
Through that winter, until you love the flowers again.