To James Joyce and Virginia Woolf

There are three yellow flowers in a single vase by my mother's bed. The bees have been brought up to the edge of the petals, dusting their wings with the pale and aromatic pollen, and I blink three times as I sit on my chair. My inner mind rejoices in the subtle nuances of this new day, the thirteen buds that have just broke on the tree that is bare but will soon be swollen with living and blooming life. The harsh call of movement, incessent progression, breaks like a penitent's whip on his naked back, the goosebumps of exposed flesh mingling in between the red welts and failed drops of blood. I am asked to move forward, to pass quickly, to enter into a world of mechanical and constant movement. The whirl of a fan circling calls me to enter sooner, faster. And I find that I must. But then the flowers die and I pity that I never saw one petal wilt.