WHAT THOSE FLOWERS COST
You would understand what those pink flowers cost
the rhododendron if you ever saw this gaunt shrub
on clear January nights, when Orion stands
on top of the sky, club in hand, hunting the moon—
and saw the moon crouching among the roofs,
ready to pounce, while the Pleiades hovered
like midges buzzing around Orion’s ears…
If you saw how the rhododendron’s evergreen
leaves curl like old paper as the temperature drops—
if you watched until the moon jumped out
from behind a chimney, growling at the stars,
and stayed long enough to lose the feeling
in your ears and nose, wondering how
a naked tree can stand it, then you would understand
with what intensity the rhododendron studied the cold,
trying to learn “its own excuse for being,” and why
it devoted itself to one place, where it could grow these
blossoms—a mixture of happiness, indifference, and scorn…
So different from a dandelion’s—that pure emblem
of the samurai without a master—moving from field
to field, wherever they want, with their effortless yellow…
Early June—even the nights are warm. Orion has left the sky.
It will be a long time before we see the hero return,
but somehow, the rhododendron made it through,
and now it’s taking this opportunity to show off a little
after all that suffering…What better example
of courage can I depend on, besides this?
______________
William Welch
Review by Jan Wiezorek
For me, William Welch’s “WHAT THOSE FLOWERS COST” is nearly a dialogue between the constellations and flowers, especially the evening of the rhododendron. Like flowers, we all at some moments want to curl up, and maybe even die. Yet, the rhododendron gives us courage, in Welch’s poem, to battle against the cold and win as a reason for existence. Welch uses many images of stars and flowers to help us reach our own conclusions, our own rationale for living.