The Flowers
You missed the flowers of late summer,
When the
black-eyed Susans would return your gaze,
Compass their petals outward,
bright sunlight rays
Of wasted effort while you slumber.
I cut pink
bright stars for your bedside,
Which provide contrast to hospital
whiteness
And your drug-induced coma, bringing lightness
To your true
state, about which best lied.
Tea roses blush outside your
windows,
From a wet fall flourish of ripening buds,
Greet your garden
return and memory floods
Of their faint fragrance when the wind
blows.
Silverlace blossoms for your review,
Once propped up on your
bed toward the pergola,
Are like delicate tatting, with your soul
a
Short step from eternity’s preview.
The peppermint
poinsettias add
Radiance to the funeral home’s pallor,
As we
remaining mortals praise your valor
And esprit
de corps that you once had.
I brought
your Christmas amaryllis,
A late bloomer, much like yourself during
life,
Rising up tall through the worst of winter’s strife,
Both
with warm colors which instill us.
Through vestiges of early-spring
snows,
Crocuses emerge upward near your headstone,
Which you
instructed last autumn that there sown
Would burst before nearby dogwood
rows.
I stand awkwardly, my mind cowers
From your lesson to me of
shedding no tears,
Showing how to walk through the fire of our
fears,
As if it were a field of flowers.
— Mark Allen
From Springfield, Mark Allen started writing poems
four years ago, drawing inspiration from the African poet Abdul-Rasheed
Na’Allah. He spent the first year writing a collection of poems for
his wife, as a Christmas present. “The Flowers” was written
this past year.
This article appears in Dec 15-21, 2005.
