The Flower Shop
The Flower Shop - meaning Summary
Indifference in a Flower Shop
The poem stages a brief, everyday scene: a man in a flower shop selecting flowers collapses and dies as money and flowers spill to the floor. The florist watches the rolling coins and ruined blooms, aware that she ought to act but unable to know where to begin. The narrative lingers on the interchange of human vulnerability and indifferent objects—money, flowers—as the ordinary transactional moment becomes a small crisis. The poem highlights the awkwardness of bystander inaction and the mismatch between care's moral urgency and practical helplessness in an everyday setting.
Read Complete AnalysesA man enters a flower shop and decides on some flowers. The florist wraps them up as the man puts his hand into his pocket to find the money to pay for the flowers, but at the same time, suddenly he places a hand over his heart and falls. As he falls the money rolls around on the floor, and the flowers fall with the man, with the money, and the florist stands there as the money rolls, as the flowers ruin, as the man dies. It's obviously all very sad, and she really should do something, this florist, but she doesn't know how to go about it, she doesn't know where to start. There are so many things to do for this dying man, these ruining flowers, and this money, this rolling money that won't stop.
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