"fiery braille"

The title of this poem ("fiery braille") derives from Tom's lines in the opening of Tennessee Williams' "The Glass Menagerie":

“. . . the thirties, when the huge middle class of America was matriculating in a school for the blind. Their eyes had failed them, or they had failed their eyes, and so they were having their fingers pressed forcibly down on the fiery Braille alphabet of a dissolving economy.”

WIlliams' dynamic image seems more relevant now than it did in the forties, or during its referent, the Great Depression. In the thirties, unfettered greed was the engine; today, the driving force is still greed lubricated by oil. My poem focuses on a single flower, but the drama no longer simmering in the background is obvious.