The GeraniumWhen I put her out, once, by the garbage pail,She looked so limp and bedraggled,So foolish and trusting, like a sick poodle,Or a wizened aster in late September,I brought her back in againFor a new routine -Vitamins, water, and whateverSustenance seemed sensibleAt the time: she'd livedSo long on gin, bobbie pins, half-smoked cigars, dead beer,Her shriveled petals fallingOn the faded carpet, the staleSteak grease stuck to her fuzzy leaves.(Dried-out, she creaked like a tulip.)The things she endured!-The dumb dames shrieking half the nightOr the two of us, alone, both seedy,Me breathing booze at her,She leaning out of her pot toward the window.Near the end, she seemed almost to hear me-And that was scary-So when that snuffling cretin of a maidThrew her, pot and all, into the trash-can,I said nothing.But I sacked the presumptuous hag the next week,I was that lonely.
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About Theodore Roethke
Theodore Roethke was a 20th-century American pulitzer prize winning american poet. Theodore Huebner Roethke was an American poet. He is regarded as one of the most accomplished and influential poets of his generation, having won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1954 for his book The Waking, and the annual National Book Award for Poetry on two occasions: in 1959 for Words for the Wind, and posthumously in 1965 for The Far Field. Read more on Wikipedia →