A Study of Urban Botany

In England, you see a lot of flowers that bloom in the rain:
pointed petals arch downward, bouncing above the two-legged stems
that glide beneath them.

Their roots are restless and tread earth quickly,
sending neural signals to shrink the petals
back into the bud from where they began.

I've seen one of these buds dangle from a girl’s wrist,
it was pink and delicate, hanging upside down.

In full bloom the flowers tower over us, their webbed metal fingers
outstretched like the bones of a bat,
keeping us between the water that nourishes them
and the sidewalk they float above.