Howie Good

Deadheading

Every morning
and again
most evenings

I deadhead
my flowers,

using thumb
and index finger
as pincers

to remove
spent blossoms
one by one,

some scratched
and dented
like a student trumpet

and some flat
like a paper star,

but others more
like a poet confined
in a madhouse,

petals curled inward,
colors exhausted.

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Howie Good believes with Mencken that a good phrase is better than a great truth.

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