After the fires and after the rain …
Plant, I don’t know you,
never saw you before.
Yet here you are
fully arrived
on my garden path –
and in it,
in that widening crack
in the rain-damaged concrete;
your leaves bedraggled, thin,
full of holes like nibbles
from something that must have been
eating you little by little … and yet
your flowers so white they shine.
Your flowers,
so white they startle
so radiant they cause delight,
seem like a message.
Yes, they say, life can come back,
can emerge from the dark
and grow,
even apparently from nowhere
from nothing.
Two days later you’re gone,
vanished as if you’d never been –
but leaving, like scent lingering,
that heart-expanding shine.
In Weekly Scribblings #7 at Poets and Storytellers United, Rommy invites us to pay tribute. I'm thinking this poem also suits the current earthweal challenge, Finding Hope.
Great words. Nature never ceases to amaze me, too.
ReplyDeleteOh those white blooms are gorgeous, Rosemary!💝 I agree, it does seem like a message and resonate with; "life can come back, can emerge from the dark and grow, even apparently from nowhere from nothing." Evocative write!💝
ReplyDeleteMy daughter lives in Oregon where one crop is seed grasses. They intentionally burn off those fields annually to improve the ecology of the soil for the next year's crop. Nature never ceases to amaze!
ReplyDeleteUnfortunately the invaders never learned from our Indigenous Australians the right way to burn in order to nourish new growth, and so we have had the destructive fires instead. One good thing that has come out of them is that FINALLY some of our State governments are starting to work with the original people, with their centuries of knowledge about how to read the land, to try and prevent such catastrophe in the future.
DeleteThat is miracle indeed, proof that Mother Earth has one mandate: to heal and grow, to recover from our abuse, like every other battered woman.
ReplyDeleteLovely flow to this, Rosemary.
ReplyDeleteI like the details that bring the poem to life..."rain-damaged concrete"..."full of holes like nibbles".
JIM
Indeed, finding hope--with both a blossom and a lingering scent--needs no other recognition but the lift in our hearts.
ReplyDeleteWonderful words!
ReplyDeleteWe should follow in their example as you never know quite what life will offer us, so we must grab the moment when we can.
ReplyDeleteYep! That's it. You have got to the guts of it.
DeleteLuv your little messenger of hope
ReplyDeleteHappy you dropped by my blog Rosemary
Much❤love
It’s so wonderful to see plants triumph over disaster, Rosemary! The seeds could have been carried on the hot wind and then cooled by the rain or hiding under the path. I love the way the ephemeral plants left ‘like scent lingering, / that heart-expanding shine’.
ReplyDeleteHope is small and frail like this tiny, half-eaten blossom, the next day but for the ghost of a scent lingering in this poem. That's all we have to work with amid immense despair. Thanks for sharing it at earthweal. -- Brendan
ReplyDeleteHope is sometimes all we have, your poem is beautiful.
ReplyDeleteHere's to the feisty flowers that remind us hope can grow anywhere.
ReplyDeleteBeauty is so short-lived that you may have missed this small flower yearning to grow in an unfortunate spot. Good catch, I say but also there is hope that even in an unlikely situation, beauty can grow in unexpected places. Thank you for giving me this thought, Rosemary.
ReplyDeleteThere are few things as hopeful as a flower, and one that has found a way to live on tarmac is a very special. You capture it beautifully. It reminds me of the strength of small things.
ReplyDeleteBloom while you can! Wonderful poem, Rosemary.
ReplyDeletePeople come and go. Blossoms come and go. But when they touch our lives, however briefly, we want to give tribute to them, as you have in this poem.
ReplyDelete