Bearded Iris

1
A sort of synesthetic pun: the purples
smell like grapes when grapes
still had a smell, and remnants
of fertility, which we
in an excess of ever-more-ease
have banished from our tables.
A throwback then, like Concords on the trellis
below the swing. The sibling
blossoms — firstborn, second,
opening in succession — ought
to be a sign of comfort-in-community but
look how the youngest
carry the browning corpses on their shoulders. As
so often is the case with us.
I used to think Siberians played the better part
all round: the solitary
flourish then the choir of stately verticals
till fall. What was it
I thought the world could provide?
Mortality without the mess?

2
My father was the oldest and therefore
expected to have
a leather heart. They were farmers
animals died.
But when Eddie’s favorite dog got old it was
Olaf’s job
to go into the woods with a gun.
So neither late
nor early are we spared. Good dog,
it followed where it was led.
3
Ruffled falls and ruffled shoulders — 
a garden
of children in pinafores. Nor nocent yet,
John Milton wrote,
the better to remind us we can imagine
no such thing.
He couldn’t have been much more than one,
my father, in the photograph,
not speaking yet, first haircut still
some months away. How
in the world did she manage?
White bloomers, white smock,
they would have been washed when the chores
were done, the iron —
I’ve held it — heated on the cookstove.
Photographer once
a year. The sheer hard work
to posit a state of cleanliness.
4
Stigma, stamen, ovary, beard: flaunted
devotion to making-
more-of-the-same. If the dog does not
whimper
but lies down and covers its head
with its paws
and the man with the gun isn’t much for
words, where
do you go for plotline? If
the man
who built the trellis and the swing set too
and taught a child to count
while he pushed wasn’t frightened
of death for his own sake but
would say we had it coming, all of us,
better a bit
too soon than all this sordid hanging on,
will the child
be better equipped for — what-do-we-call-them? — 
years-to-come?
First adding, then subtraction, then before
you know it,
remainders. The parts that can’t be made to fit.