Roadside Ditch Natura Morta Poem by James Galvin

No one can draw fast enough
To capture the cut
Iris before its form falls
From its former self.
But when we passed a patch
In the ditch,
She told me to stop and she stepped
Down, opening her clasp
Knife. She spared one iris
With an impressionistic
Cocoon on its stem
And cut the flower beside it.
Once home
She rendered in a careful hurry.
She drew into the night as the iris died.
I woke grafted to her
In a vague, translucent hammock of dread.