I Wish I'd Written This

Returning From a Flower Viewing
by Angie Walker

If you make tea for people returning from a flower viewing, displaying a painting of flowers or birds, or a flower arrangement in the tearoom is inappropriate. – Sen No Rikyu

But, if someone’s strumming a harp’s G-string in a concentrated, concerted effort in the tea room, as if it were a guitar G trying to make out like a mock machine gun, well even this is a luminous labor of afternoon love-making compared to the halting slap-in-the-face from coming in from the out-of-doors fully drenched in leggy flowers, the jazz of bees, pistils and petals, to face a fragmentary and ridiculously pasty-painted landscape some hack thought encompassed all. It cannot encompass all. I’ve just seen the stamen and pistil, for God’s sake.

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This is another of the poems I fell in love with during April Poetry Month. There were many more, of course, and I don't propose to treat you to them all, particularly as you may well have seen them already anyway. But this one is so deliciously quirky and different, whilst at the same time so succinct and sane, I simply couldn't resist it.

Above all I love her delight in the real beauty of nature. What the quotation that served as her prompt conveys obliquely and with restraint, she says uncompromisingly, exuberantly.

Angie, who blogs at angieinspired says of herself:

"I am a writer. I like words. I especially enjoy temperamental verbs and nouns duking it out in alliteration and assonance. Twenty-six characters (the ABC's if you must call them that), rearranged in a gazillion different ways make me happy. But remember, it don't mean a thing if it ain't got that swing...and a good tap shoe finish!"

And if you haven't caught up with her blog yet, it's full of good stuff!

Material shared in 'I Wish I'd Written This' is presented for study and review. Poems, photos and other writings remain the property of the copyright owners, usually their authors.