Poem by Leo Vroman

Flowers

If everyone turned all at once to flowers

they would be large-sized flowers with trailing whiskers.

Emaciated flies, dead beetles

would end entangled in their hairs.

Toothpicks, surreptitiously sprouted

would swell into turned table-legs,

buds of cotton would burst open

into plush hearts that smelled of fringes,

And on the mountains plaster pillars stand

weeping spates of plaster grapes.

Cardboard leaves would drift upon the water,

The butterflies fall apart into loose wings

And all the flowerbeds shrivel up with scent

If everyone turned all at once to flowers.