By W.G. Quixote
Date: 23 May 1997

Petals

Dame poet why have you never undertook
to press your precious petals into a book?
Your tulips decree: Love is not fiction;
the scent of your rose: a fragrant benediction.
As these blushed leaves spread with each new hour
throughout the land filigreed love will flower.

For this culture has become splendidly crass
as true sentiments wilt like shadeless grass.
You have the muse to lift love from the mire,
return it to bloom and young hearts inspire.
In your verse virtue will again take root
with truth and beauty as its special fruit.

Let Ophelias no longer die 
with their rue, unrequited.
But through your laureled lyric 
may gentle men be knighted.