Artificial poppy

I'm not keen on artificial flowers. They may look alright from a distance, but here's where they fall down close up. Cleverly made, but not for me. The real thing is so much better.

The strength of artificial flowers, their constancy, is also their weakness. I love the feeling that real flowers are ephemeral; that they open from a bud, subtly change colour and shape, eventually achieving their destiny as reproductive organs (if sufficiently attractive to pollinators). Perhaps no longer beautiful to look at, but with a wonderfully satisfying function: to produce the seeds of a new generation.

Meanwhile, the artificial flower gathers dust for eons to come.