A Tulip in Winter
(for Janice Fitzpatrick)
Your out-of-season hospital tulip still
brightens above its parti-colored foil.
Lacquered in lamplight, its fleshy leafage
could, conceivably, survive this way
a hundred days. A hundred days (imagine
that) to paint out the wallpaper harlequins,
uncane your cane-back rocking chair,
to reclaim your green connection to a place
where flowers such as these are grown
to leave the living less impossibly alone.
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Sherod Santos is the author of five books of poetry, most recently The Perishing. In 2005, he published Greek Lyric Poetry: A New Translation.