Orchids

A poem for my brother on his birthday

Cattleya rex plate 8377 in Curtis’s Bot. Magazine (Orchidaceae), vol. 137 (1911), illus. by Matilda Smith (1854-1926), litho. by J.N. Fitch (1840–1927)

Orchids

                for my brother David Edward Judge
                           (Dec. 2, 1962 - April 18, 2023)

It was orchids not irises that you loved.
You called them the queen of all flowers

for their grace and ability to entrance
even the sun. The day they drained

a liter of fluid from your lungs,
the day they found a gray mass

in your heart, you found a guide
to every orchid nature could imagine.

It was your birthday, your death day,
and every day in between —

the sun setting to end them,
rising to begin them,

across oceans of white Cattleyas,
blooming, then falling, like we all do.