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Florist’s Dream: The Flood
Natalie Solmer
filling the cold buckets
I’m inside the cooler
everywhere is the cooler
cutting red roses
in the black-walled cooler
it’s all chiaroscuro
in a big grocery store
I’m trying to keep up
there’s a flood suddenly
in the store
my lover’s family: his mother, sister
visiting from Jamaica, we’re
swimming through the flood
I’m carrying the babies
they brought
I lose one
like a bouquet of roses floating away
I wake in my own mother’s home
I’m away from my lover
in real life
the great flood still
killing down in the
mountains where
I learned life
in a floral shop, my youth
wiped out in Asheville streets
the mountains of my old love
4:30am, I slip back down
back into sleep
Natalie Solmer was born and raised in South Bend, Indiana, a granddaughter of Polish and German immigrants. She worked for many years as a horticulturalist and florist and is now an Associate Professor of English at Ivy Tech Community College. She also founded and edits The Indianapolis Review. She has been published in journals such as North American Review, Colorado Review, Pleiades, and Mom Egg Review. Her debut book of poetry is Water Castle (Kelsay Books, 2024).