The Day the Flowers Went Away

[Brigid Briton]

Please read Deb's post about her little garden that fell victim to the minions of conformity (the third entry in this thread: poetry-here-and-now.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=chat&action=display&thread=1321&page=1). If it makes you as sad and as angry as it does me, I'm sure you'll be moved to write a poem about it.

Brigid

July 7: Here's my response to the challenge. It's taken me a while to write this because the incident has touched me so deeply. It's just plain wrong!

Her Garden

They took her garden away,
her expression of the beauty
inside her,
her blossoming reminder
of the goodness
in the world,
and now she sits inside alone,
with the drapes pulled tight,

afraid to even sing.

[eiken]

Gosh,
Really sad Brigid, makes me want to just cry.

I wrote a poem about my garden recently, we had dreadful spring storms and all my plants got burned and destroyed by the rain and salt laden winds. I cried as I had to cut back trees to stumps and my cherry blossom to nothingness, my tall rambling roses had to be cut back to the bone too, they were all along the walls but singed to death. I must look at the thread you are talking about and see if I can write a poem....we all love our plants, somehow feel attached to them, they are part of my landscape and when taken away, really take from my well being too. Spring dared to bloom again in May and summer has been on and off, we have very heavy thunder storms so not much fun. Germany is too hot at the moment, can't sleep there so Ireland is the best place but finding a balance and keeping a nice garden is a challenge.

I am on Facebook and a lot of poetry pages have started up recently. Many of the haiku ones give a daily prompt, a word and you write a haiku to that word, it is wonderful to see 100's of posts from all over the world. I am part of 5 poetry sites but don't post much, just read, some great quality work. The prompts are paintings, photos, words and topical issues in the world. It might be a good idea for this site to stimulate writing....a photo or a prompt of sorts. The prompt for the latest post in one of the sites is Bullying, a poem on this theme. It might spark something??? I have posted Guilt - a small life on the theme of bullying here.

[Neal Allen (snowtracks)]

Flowers and stones

The silent cat
views all from her window sill, and
has no opinion.
She just watches the grey walkway and forgets that the flowers are all gone.

The sad woman
sees nothing beyond her curtains, and
Feels helpless against authority.
She writes poetry without harsh words but knows that humans are unkind

The petty official
understands only arrogance, and
cruelly feeds her own importance.
She cares naught for the living soul who tried simply to spread beauty

[Brigid Briton]

Thanks for your poem, Neal.

I'm still saddened by this assault on beauty. Does anyone else have a poem to contribute?