Kalanchoe
Last year I bought a flaming Katy
To mark a change from mistletoe –
As red as holly, green as ivy,
As pretty as any on show.
With buds like baubles till they burst,
For long after the thirty-first.
This year I still have that Katy –
Bulletproof, she just goes on,
Though all the year her stem has bolted,
And her blooms are long long gone,
She’s clearly no perpetual rose,
But then, that’s just the way she grows.
She was so pretty once, my Katy,
As a hothouse cultivar –
But she escaped to be a tree
Who’s reaching for the Christmas star
She’s tall and ragged, but it’s daft –
I feel I can’t deny such graft.
Last year I bought a flaming Katy
Who I water faithfully,
Yet she and I, we both us know
She’ll never bloom again for me.
Some plants we keep not just for show,
I guess that’s just the way we grow.
Rhyming Couplets 