Just as I wonder whether it's going to die, the orchid blossoms

and I can't explain why it moves my heart, why such pleasure

comes from one small bud on a long spindly stem, one blood red gold flower

opening at mid-summer, tiny, perfect in its hour.

Even to white- haired craggy poet, it's purely erotic,

pistil and stamen, pollen, dew of the world, a spoonful

of earth, and water. Erotic because there's death at the heart of birth,

drama in those old sunrise prisms in wet cedar boughs,

deepest mystery in washing evening dishes or teasing my wife,

who grows, yes, more beautiful because one of us will die.