Flowers Would Be Better

My wife calls me to see her garden.
Forty blooms of iris in purple, white,
gold, lavender, the falls one color,
the standards another, such delicacy
of structure, such perfume, such magnificence
of color and bloom. It eases my mind
that a woman at work on her knees
in earth with patience and rain and sun
can will up such an extraordinary vision,
as if our stay here could be celebrated
with flowers, not by young men,
asleep forever because swords rattle
in the hands of old men.