Roadside Ditch Natura Morta

No one can draw fast enough

To capture the cut

Iris before its form falls

From its former self.

But when we passed a patch

In the ditch,

She told me to stop and she stepped

Down, opening her clasp

Knife. She spared one iris

With an impressionistic

Cocoon on its stem

And cut the flower beside it.

Once home

She rendered in a careful hurry.

She drew into the night as the iris died.

I woke grafted to her

In a vague, translucent hammock of dread.