After the first rain

in October, they spring up

in straight rows around

 

houses and grave plots;

something in their DNA

craves a human-drawn

 

line to follow, like

grade-school children writing their

names on a ruled page.

 

Photo by Louisiana Gardener

 

Up close, too, they look

more like kids’ toys than like real

flowers: red plastic

 

pinwheels fastened to

green wooden sticks, with not one

wan leaf among them;

 

Photo by Louisiana Gardener

 

and in their centers,

where you’d expect to find sex-

ual organs and

 

sticky gold pollen,

is only nothingness, like

the crotch of a doll.

 

Yet when I go to

the poor Creole church at Isle

Brevelle this time of

 

autumn for their fair,

it’s not the store-bought aster

nor the rich man’s rose

 

that I find tucked in

the plaster folds of Mary’s

dress with a child’s hope.