PAD Day 25: Carnival in a Hanging Pot

First of all, I want to wish a happy 84th birthday to former US Poet Laureate and Facebook friend Ted Kooser. who generously shares new poems on his page. He's maxed out on friends there, but you can certainly follow him and read all his wonderful poems.

Today's prompts from Write Better Poetry and NaPoWriMo: (1)Write a "dream" and/or "reality" poem, and (2) "write a love poem, one that names at least one flower, contains one parenthetical statement, and in which at least some lines break in unusual places." This prompt was inspired by the e.e. cummings poem [somewhere i have never travelled,gladly beyond], so I carried some of that whimsy and non-capitalization with me when I wrote this poem. The unusual line breaks - just one word at the end of each stanza - took on a kind of form, reminding me of the hay(na)ku I like to write - or more accurately, reverse hay(na)ku. I've been obsessed with this very pretty annual flower that I hadn't been aware of before, whose name took me a few minutes to figure out how to pronounce properly.

P.S.: "Million bells" (see line 5) is another name for Calibrachoa.

Calibrachoa
 
I dreamt I gave you flowers
but I didn't know how to pronounce
them
 
those little cousins of petunias
a million trailing bells, a riot of
color
 
variegated in violet, yellow,
blue, pink and white and
red
 
a carnival in a hanging pot
and I bought enough to fill your
bathtub
 
And I bought enough to fill your bedroom

and your front and back
yards
 
and you had so many we decided
to share them all over
town
 
and we hung them from lampposts and trees
and a tall man standing on the
corner
 
and we waltzed down the middle
of the street to the song of
colors
 
and we said the word over and
over
 
(cal-i-bra-KO-ah
cal-i-bra-KO-ah
cal-i-bra-KO-ah)
 
until we got it
right
 
until it became
music
 
until it became
poetry
 
and when I woke I went
straight to the garden shop
and
 
bought the biggest, most vibrant
basket of calibrachoa I could
find
 
and the man at the counter smiled
at me because when I said it
right
 
it sounded like
poetry