maiden voyage

the lamplighters come
one by one
putting their iron nightcaps
over the dawdling gaslights
as the morning peels the stars from its back.
weathervanes point their black,
accusatory fingers
like viewers of a hanging,
and the streets
lie in their purple veils,
doorways yawning,
footfall in the alleys and the thoroughfares –
the shh-ing
and readying that comes backstage
before a rising curtain...
 
the flowergirls shuffle out,
faces bowed, their basketfuls
of sloop-tongued blossoms,
clustered and gossiping like busybodies –
they were gathered in the early morning,
bunched and congested
in their meadows like snores,
picked by rough hands
and serenaded by labor songs,
their heads nodding in the baskets like
prisoners in paddywagons.
the dark meridian coronating the horizon,
sneezing in their bushels,
they are rudely stolen from their stems –
kidnapped,
they fly their trodden skirts.
 
and now, into the scrubbed london streets,
they stick their tongues out at each other,
as the flowergirls haggle.
some of the blossoms
still budded and knotted-
unfulfilled promises-
lie at the bottom of the basket,
swooning – maidens in the heat,
with no one to catch their weak and toppling bodies.
the more sensible posies flirt their brown-edged petals,
knowing this may be their last chance.
 
pressed to noses, strewn in gutters –
by mid-morning
the flowergirls holding their warm coins,
having half-emptied their baskets.
and the remaining flowers shivering,
wonder if they're next...

oh please,
 
let me

be next.