Poet about beauty full Flowers

Not only the cultivated ones in parks

and gardens, unfolding immaculate petals

on a terrace or trellis, and not just

the wild ones, kissed by elegant birds

in jungle foliage, or brightening roadsides

and meadows, blossoming anyplace that anything

can blossom, but thanks also to flowers

blooming in paintings, on carpets, pottery,

fabrics of dresses and draperies or wherever

the real or invented colors and shapes

of flowers lift the mood of a scene,

as they are snipped from bushes, gathered

in cordless bunches, tied in ribbons

or arranged in rare bouquets for precious vases.

Perfect by nature for gift and centerpiece,

they perfume ballrooms, backyards and prairies,

and, indoors or out the window, they gladden

celebrations and refresh every country

and season, for, even in iciest winter.

The word flower thrives in every language,

adorning what everyone says and imagines

with the beautiful thought of flowers

which teach by timeless example

that life goes by anyway; you might as well

flower.

— Kate Farrell’s website

flowers by Shawna Lemay

4. Relentlessly Craving by Julia Fiedorczuk

poem, poem be strong

like a shock wave, Grieg’s Concerto in A Minor

put down roots, find the source, bloom, bear fruit

come to life, poem, I need your blood

poem, poem be as perilously lovely

as the drunken woman in the painting by Munch

what counts are only the base colors, yellow, black, red

what counts is fire

there is a time for hope

and a time for despair

what counts is fire

if you have no flesh

you do not know love

nor do you know death

poem, poem be in the sun

in the eye of the world

in the turning of bread into motion

in the constant decay that is the condition of all synthesis

in the blood

fire, be

there is a time for hope

and a time for despair

what counts is fire and ice

poem, poem be like the dark night of the soul

Translation from the Polish by Bill Johnston

— from Oxygen

5. Song for Nobody by Thomas Merton

A yellow flower

(Light and spirit)

Sings by itself

For nobody.

A golden spirit

(Light and emptiness)

Sings without a word

By itself.

Let no one touch this gentle sun

In whose dark eye

Someone is awake.

(No light, no gold, no name, no colour

And no thought:

O, wide awake!)

A golden heaven

Sings by itself

A song to nobody.The bud

stands for all things,

even for those things that don’t flower,

for everything flowers, from within, of self-blessing;

though sometimes it is necessary

to reteach a thing its loveliness,

to put a hand on its brow

of the flower

and retell it in words and in touch

it is lovely

until it flowers again from within, of self-blessing;

as Saint Francis

put his hand on the creased forehead

of the sow, and told her in words and in touch

blessings of earth on the sow, and the sow

began remembering all down her thick length,

from the earthen snout all the way

through the fodder and slops to the spiritual curl of the tail,

from the hard spininess spiked out from the spine

down through the great broken heart

to the sheer blue milken dreaminess spurting and shuddering

from the fourteen teats into the fourteen mouths sucking and blowing beneath them:

the long, perfect loveliness of sow.

flowers by Shawna Lemay

7. Praying by Mary Oliver

It doesn’t have to be

the blue iris, it could be

weeds in a vacant lot, or a few

small stones; just

pay attention, then patch

a few words together and don’t try

to make them elaborate, this isn’t

a contest but the doorway

into thanks, and a silence in which

another voice may speak.

— from ThirstThe bud

stands for all things,

even for those things that don’t flower,

for everything flowers, from within, of self-blessing;

though sometimes it is necessary

to reteach a thing its loveliness,

to put a hand on its brow

of the flower

and retell it in words and in touch

it is lovely

until it flowers again from within, of self-blessing;

as Saint Francis

put his hand on the creased forehead

of the sow, and told her in words and in touch

blessings of earth on the sow, and the sow

began remembering all down her thick length,

from the earthen snout all the way

through the fodder and slops to the spiritual curl of the tail,

from the hard spininess spiked out from the spine

down through the great broken heart

to the sheer blue milken dreaminess spurting and shuddering

from the fourteen teats into the fourteen mouths sucking and blowing beneath them:

the long, perfect loveliness of sow.

flowers by Shawna Lemay

7. Praying by Mary Oliver

It doesn’t have to be

the blue iris, it could be

weeds in a vacant lot, or a few

small stones; just

pay attention, then patch

a few words together and don’t try

to make them elaborate, this isn’t

a contest but the doorway

into thanks, and a silence in which

another voice may speak.

— from Thirst