Nosegay.

I was cleaning out some files and came across three bits of poems that I couldn’t recollect writing. Only one of them was complete and after some thought, I realized that it was something I had written in response to a challenge to use a specific word. Nosegay, I think.

Anyway here it is:

When the dress is wilted,
The ribbons no longer bright.
When the slightly ratty faces
Are not softened by the light.
When the cheery nosegay
No longer seems so gay.
And all the celebrations
Seem many years away.
The harshest of reality
Has clearly come to call.
And the wallflower-y girls
No longer press the wall.
The one shining moment
Has surely come and gone.
But the marriage license, darling
That will linger on.

I rather like it. But I feel the need to defend it by saying it was written in five minutes, so it’s not…well, it is what it is. And on re-reading it, I realize that it can go both ways. I think I intended it to be a snarky, Dorothy Parker-esque comment on weddings. How the wedding day is all flowers and ribbons but when all that is gone, you’re still married. And maybe all you really wanted was the flowers and the ribbons. On the other hand, I suppose you can read it as a comfirmation of that fact that once all the pretty stuff is gone, it’s the important stuff that sticks around.

You decide..