PAD Day 19: A Smelly Bouquet

 Today's prompts from Write Better Poetry and NaPoWriMo: (1) Write a "family" poem, and (2) "Today, pick a flower or two (or a whole bouquet, if you like) from this online edition of Kate Greenaway’s Language of Flowers. Now, write your own poem in which you muse on your selections’ names and meanings. If you’re so inclined, you could even do some outside research into your flowers, and incorporate facts that you learn into your work."

REgarding "family," I've already written a couple of poems about my pateranl grandparents. Today, my focus is my wife, whom I like to present with flowers about once a month if not more. (Sometimes she just buys them for herself.) I didn't do a very deep dive in the origins and meanings of my floral subject because I don't have time to do much research this weekend. I do know they have some connections to spirituality, particularly in the Christian faith. And I learned that jonquils and narcissus are both members of the daffodil family, so all narcissus and jonquils are daffodils, but not vice versa. There is one aspect of jonquils I find less than attractive, though, as I note in my poem.

I Give My Wife Jonquils
 
I find them at a local road stand,
cut bunches of little daffodils
with yellow collars and orange trumpets
bright enough to play a fanfare.
I bring them home to my wife
who smiles a thank-you
and puts them in a cut glass vase
on the dining room table.
 
But soon we remember the reputation
of jonquils—their heavy, heavy perfume
that not everyone finds pleasing.
To me, they smell like swamp water.
They have commandeered the house
with their overpowering odor.
 
Greenaway, in The Language of Flowers,
says they mean “I desire a return of affection.”
Not with that stench, fellas,
any more than I would expect a hug
from my wife after a dirty, sweaty
day of yard work.
 
So we relegate that feisty bunch
to a table on the back patio,
where they look just as pretty,
and the bees don’t seem to mind the smell.