Poetry Inspirations in the Dead Blooms of Autumn

Earlier this month, I bought a bouquet of mums in autumnal shades.  Some flowers had fallen off the stems, so I put them in a lead crystal bowl that my mother bought for me in her travels:

Yesterday I decided it was time to get rid of the decaying blossoms.  I was struck by how they looked and tried to capture them in a photograph.

I particularly liked the way they looked nestled in the autumnal lights that I have on the front windowsill:

When I emptied the bowl, I discovered that some of the blooms had melded (not permanently) to the sides of the bowl, but it didn't occur to me to try to capture this image in photos.  The sides of the bowl had a translucent, stained glass look with different shades of yellow and orange.

I didn't capture the image on film (pixels, to be more accurate), but it must have stayed with me.  By afternoon I was writing a poem with a collection of images from this past month of post hurricane wreckage:  the tiny ghosts fluttering on a hurricane damaged fence line, the limbs clawing their way out of the brush pile, the water that lapped at the underside of the floor boards, the dead blooms.

I'm still not sure where the poem is headed, but it was a relief to write a poem of any kind.  It's been a month where most writing days felt very dry and raspy.  It was a relief to have a sense that this condition won't be permanent.