26 October, 2025
where did all the flowers go?
The pigeons are back on the CA$H 4 YOU billboard, the cars are humming north in droves, couples and men with hats and dogs climb up and over the walking bridge, the trains pass by with less frequency than yesterday chiming their bells for us to heed as they go and go on, and the leaves on the trees seem a little duller than the day before last.
Everything is in its place — that is to say, everything is laid here dead or dying. Slowly, imperceptibly, until suddenly no more.
Where do these things go?
Do they in death, as in life, have a special place or way? Do they circulate along the streets and the seasons like we do? Is there a special cupboard for things that were but are now not?
And, is there then a specialer cupboard for the special cupboard for things that were but are now not that was and is no longer?
And then, may we assume that there is an even specialer cupboard where at the end of the day of days when everything is all said and done — all pigeons and billboards and humming cars and chiming trains and men with hats and dogs and the duller leaves of trees have done their dues and run their course and have had the memory of what they once were but are now not accounted for in the book of books of the arcmaster’s secretary’s intern — and that in this specialest cupboard the specialer cupboard for the special cupboard for things that were but are now not that was and is no longer — and all the other things that once had been or were being and had been classed as nouns in this dust of word that now the wind scatters — can find inside a safe and sure and final place to rest?
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Such are the questions asked by flowers in november, as by errants the world over who have seen the spring of things and now in themselves recognize their fall. Would one be so foolish to try to answer.
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