Tuesday's poem: Freshen the Flowers, She Said by Mary Oliver

Freshen the Flowers, She Said

So I put them in the sink, for the cool porcelain
  was tender,
and took out the tattered and cut each stem
  on a slant,
trimmed the black and raggy leaves, and set them all-
  roses, delphiniums, daises, iris, lilies,
and more whose names I don't know, in bright new water-
  gave them

a bounce upward at the end to let them take
  their own choice of position, the wheels, the spurs,
the little sheds of the buds. It took, to do this,
  perhaps fifteen minutes.
Fifteen minutes of music
  with nothing playing.

(picture taken in Paris, May 2012, by my husband)