Flowers in the Gardens of the Spirit World

are giant and bright and beautiful

and they sway all day

and they’re green 

and they’re blue

and they’re purple too

and they communicate with us

by the way they sway

and by the way they spray

out a mist of pure love

and a mist of pure joy

and with their petals outstretched 

they shout out praise 

to the God of flowers

and they shout out praise 

to the God of people

and by their love 

and by their life 

the flowers in the gardens 

of the Spirit World 

produce more love 

and more life

and you might say

that this is my imagination

and you might say

that this is hallucination

and you might say 

I need medication

but if you would have been dead

you would not have said

“Nonsense,” and then walked off 

to pick and pin down 

the normal flowers

on this normal Earth,

and you would not have attended

the bi-monthly meeting 

of local flower enthusiasts

at which you serve as secretary 

rather you would have 

closed your eyes, 

let your soul rise,

seen the flowers

smelled the flowers

felt the flowers

all the million flowers

in all the million gardens

of the glorious Spirit World

and then you would have believed me

that this petunia is temporary 

and that this lily

and that this other lily

both of which are neatly reposed

in your science flower book

will decompose, decompose, decompose,

along with your science flower book

and if you would have been dead

then you would have believed me

that these flowers pinned down

in your science flower book

are not everything that Existence 

is willing to give to you, freely.