Dahlias are shown three to a vase, except Show Dahlias, which are shown one to a vase.
A vase is any bottle or container suitable for showing Dahlias.
– Show guide for Cut Flower exhibitors
The wind blows away our footprints
– Charles Wright
My roots are a bone river system run dry,
Like an addict’s curse a thousand fingers
Lust for potash and manure, for a phosphorus
Opioid and leaves for caffeinated morning
Rays. I rise for you in the fleeting shade;
In those early breaths, when sparrows tip toe
Over westerlies. In the low light sins
Are easier to forgive and the lines
Of your face descend like rain down the shears.
Forget the lime-sulphur bruises you left,
We’re best in the clammy dawn when gardeners
Hunt the rows—ambition full in their eyes.
Buds litter the ground like plump grenades—
An innocent libation for Flora.
I ascend with petal tea-cups for the dew,
Florets painting a lilac azulejo.
Love formed in the centre and waited on the wind—
A pollen blush for the touch of time.
I remember when I was pared from mother
And planted with eyes to the sun. Outgrown,
Those sodden days fell into summer
And I wept as Icarus burned the sky—
‘non est ad astra mollis e terris via’
How children never fully know their father.
There’s a coarseness to gloved hands and the broken
Knowledge of cut stems. When cell walls collapse
And I am no longer part of myself.
The display benches are a garden
of refugees—a hundred sunsets bound
like crucifixes along the Appian Way.