Minding Rites

This guy I know, a rabbi, Friday nights,

on his way home before sunset in winter,

always stops at a florist or bodega

and buys a bunch of flowers for his wife.

Every week the same, a ritual,

regardless of her mood that morning, fresh

upsets at work, or snarling on the bridge;

he brings her roses wrapped in cellophane.

But isn’t there a ring of hokiness

in that? Why should a good man have to show

his devotion? Some things go unspoken;

some things get tested on the real world,

and isn’t that the place that matters most?

So when you told me I should bring you flowers,

I joked, “But don’t I show my feelings more

in dog walks, diapers, and rewiring lamps?”

The flowers, I learned later, weren’t for wooing,

not for affection in long marriage, but

for something seeded even deeper down,

through frost heaves, and which might be, roughly, peace.

(It’s funny that I just assumed romance.)

Now there’s no peace with us. I wonder what

they might have meant to you, those simple tokens,

holding in sight what no rite can grow back.

Source: Birds of the Air (Carnegie Mellon University Press, 2013)