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 again For a new routine -Vitamins, water, and whatever Sustenance seemed sensible At the time: she'd lived So long on gin, bobbie pins, half-smoked cigars, dead beer, Her shriveled petals falling On the faded carpet, the stale Steak grease stuck to her fuzzy leaves.( Dried-out, she creaked like a tulip.) The things she endured! - The dumb dames shrieking half the night Or 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 maid Threw her, pot and all, into the trash-can, I said nothing. But I sacked the presumptuous hag the next week, I was that lonely. Theodore Roethke
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  2. Sex is the consolation you have when you can't have love - Unknown

  3. Are you upset little friend? Have you been lying awake worrying? Well, don't worry... I'm here. The flood waters will recede, the famine will end, the sun will shine tomorrow, and I will always be here to take care of you. - Charles M. Schulz

  4. It is an absolute human certainty that no one can know his own beauty or perceive a sense of his own worth until it has been reflected back to him in the mirror of another loving, caring human being. - John Joseph Powell

  5. How could I have been so ignorant? she thinks. So stupid, so unseeing, so given over to carelessness. But without such ignorance, such carelessness, how could we live? If you knew what was going to happen, if you knew everything that was going to happen... - Margaret Atwood

More Quotes By Theodore Roethke
  1. Those who are willing to be vulnerable move among mysteries.

  2. In a dark time, the eye begins to see.

  3. By daily dying, I have come to be.

  4. I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow. I feel my fate in what I cannot fear. I learn by going where I have to go.

  5. What's madness but nobility of soul At odds with circumstance? The day's on fire! I know the purity of pure despair, My shadow pinned against a sweating wall, That place among the rocks--is it a cave, Or winding path? The edge is what I have...........

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