An echinacea blossom sits in a vase on the kitchen table, slightly to the left of center, bowing in my direction. Some of these wildflowers are sturdier than most, and even cut retain their bearing, their color and form, for many days. There are people like that as well, keep blooming when the root is severed, because water is enough.

This particular beauty has nineteen split-end petals, in a variety of shades of pink, lateral veins and ridges changing saturation and hue and they reach out toward the tip. Nineteen petals, if a lover counted, arrives at "She loves me": an advantage when plucking, to seek out odd-petaled plants.

Then there is the flower's firework display at the seed head. Had I left it in the garden, a few hundred of possible tomorrows would have fallen to the ground, and next year there would have been more of the same. There is a deep orange red, almost black, at the center, with flashes of color radiating out, small tongues of fire. One of the petals has been partially eaten by an insect (She loves me not); another falls away toward the stem like a pink arm lowered in a curtsey (Why don't women curtsey anymore? And why don't men bow?).

One split stem of lilac shares the vase. With its frequent detours from cut to leaf, the angular stem reminds one of a Japanese drawing, the foliage lobed and pointed, large green "spades", their faces turned this way and that, denying the importance of the flower's fixed gaze, unpretentious, back-up vocals in the band, green beneath rose, brown brown-black of the wood.

All this takes place in still life, slight breeze from the window in, the breathy hum of the refrigerator is the song, I guess, the striped tablerunner their temporary land, the books and dishes digital devices belonging to the scene, the collecting clouds, the wind outside, the early-August birds and insects busily far away, while a few short words hope to contain them all, and let them go.