This sumptuous orchid, bundled up like a cumulus cloud against the exquisite, pellucid light available only in photographs--seems clearly too full-bodied and billowy to qualify as an aging plant . But the blank brass mirror--which shows empty only to vampires and the aged--belies the plant's apparent vitality. We have sen the future and it is null and void.
Orchids in Old Age
Orchids in old age
exist in several registers at once,
straining to hear the fountains of time,
alarmed by their late plumpness
and weakening hauteur
Orchids age badly
With thinning stembones,
with widening surfaces,
straining after the moisture
far below them
