Flower arranging has a feminine and oriental ring <br />feminine as if it called for dainty fingers <br />delicacy <br />oriental like the martial arts and ma <br />the space and silence separating things <br /> <br />but I could take karate <br />even boast of it <br />car maintenance sounds masculine enough <br />and so I too feel shyness <br />and avoid the table where the women gather to enrol <br /> <br />I saw one woman once <br />before the start of early morning mass <br />busying herself with winter roses <br />crimsoning grey light <br />and then <br />her high-pitched voice beyond the rail <br />a hasty genuflection <br />and the tabernacle totally transformed <br />by petals of dark blood <br /> <br />I felt a fear in this <br />the feeling that her offering <br />though perfect <br />was for all that <br />out of place <br />had ceased to grow <br />been drained of pleasing life <br />made clumsy and cut off <br /> <br />she was out of her element herself <br /> <br />and yet <br />herb robert <br />henbane <br />water crowfoot <br />grow apace where they are <br />and a dry stone wall <br />a wrack-strewn seashore <br />and a stagnant pond <br />are catalysts in their conversions <br /> <br />I think that there is room <br />in God's world <br />for the less-than-perfect <br />for <br />the stunted bush <br />the twisted tree <br />the thrusting dogweed <br />and the clumping buttercup <br />when these are rooted <br />in an honest living soil <br />and not upheavalled <br />squeezed of substance <br />dried <br />accommodated to the leaves of unread books <br />or blighted by the heresies of self <br /> <br />I think that God is satisfied <br />with dandelions and a tablecloth <br />when these are all we have <br />to place upon His altar <br />and I think <br />that I am grateful <br />on the whole <br />that life is an arranging <br />rather than a mere arrangement<br /><br />Michael Wooff<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/flower-arranging/
