Poetry: Nom de Plume | clivejames.com
[Invisible line of text as temporary way to expand content column justified text width to hit margins on most viewports, simply for improved display stability in the interval between column creation and loading]

Nom de Plume

The bunch of flowers in the vase, what are they called?
I'll call them Anstruthers for no other reason
than that. Someone has set them there
in a drastic pose, an attempt to let them impose
their one iridescence on the view. Those Anstruthers,
I know I'll recall them, their fine pointed petals like scalpels,
the way the powder and near-navy blues leak one into another
and the discreet green of their stiff stems and leaves.
I'll see them in my mind's eye (that odd concept
that always makes me feel like Cyclops) one day
shopping for toothpaste or maybe even doing something
quite mundane. I'll look at them in the plastic time
that holds such memoirs and long after the implacable in-rush
of others into the room, none of whom will say
'How beautiful the Anstruthers are, despite everything!'