Poets United Midweek Motif ~ Flowers

Flower of Life II, 1925, 1918 by Georgia O'Keeffe

"I decided that if I could paint
that flower in a huge scale, you
could not ignore its beauty. ”- Georgia O'Keeffe

⚘ ⚘ ⚘

"The earth laughs in flowers.” 

― Ralph Waldo Emerson

“I will be the gladdest thing under the sun! I will touch 
a hundred flowers and not pick one.” 
― Edna St. Vincent Millay

“I sometimes think that never blows so red

The Rose as where some buried Caesar bled;

That every Hyacinth the Garden wears

Dropt in its Lap from some once lovely Head.” 

― Omar Khayyám

The daisy chain by Maude Goodmann (1844-1936)

Midweek Motif ~ Flowers

Flowers hold memories 
and memories hold flowers.

Your Challenge: In a new poem, memorialize a significant encounter with a flower or flowers.

Van Gogh Painting Sunflowers, Paul Gauguin (1888)

In a Burying Ground
by Sara Teasdale

This is the spot where I will lie
When life has had enough of me,
These are the grasses that will blow
Above me like a living sea.

These gay old lilies will not shrink
To draw their life from death of mine,
And I will give my body's fire
To make blue flowers on this vine.

"O Soul," I said, "have you no tears?
Was not the body dear to you?"
I heard my soul say carelessly,
"The myrtle flowers will grow more blue."

The Easter Flower 

by Claude McKay

Far from this foreign Easter damp and chilly
My soul steals to a pear-shaped plot of ground,
Where gleamed the lilac-tinted Easter lily
Soft-scented in the air for yards around;

Alone, without a hint of guardian leaf!
Just like a fragile bell of silver rime,
It burst the tomb for freedom sweet and brief
In the young pregnant year at Eastertime;

And many thought it was a sacred sign,
And some called it the resurrection flower;
And I, a pagan, worshiped at its shrine,
Yielding my heart unto its perfumed power.

Peonies

by Mary Oliver

This morning the green fists of the peonies are getting ready
to break my heart
as the sun rises,
as the sun strokes them with his old, buttery fingers

and they open–
pools of lace,
white and pink–
and all day the black ants climb over them,

boring their deep and mysterious holes
into the curls,
craving the sweet sap,
taking it away

to their dark, underground cities–
and all day
under the shifty wind,
as in a dance to the great wedding,

the flowers bend their bright bodies,
and tip their fragrance to the air,
and rise,
their red stems holding

all that dampness and recklessness
gladly and lightly,
and there it is again–
beauty the brave, the exemplary,

blazing open.
Do you love this world?
Do you cherish your humble and silky life?
Do you adore the green grass, with its terror beneath?

Do you also hurry, half-dressed and barefoot, into the garden,
and softly,
and exclaiming of their dearness,
fill your arms with the white and pink flowers,

with their honeyed heaviness, their lush trembling,
their eagerness
to be wild and perfect for a moment, before they are
nothing, forever?

    (Please forgive me for posting all of "Peony" without permission.  I love it.)  

Every Flower - Noel Paul Stookey with John Payne on saxophone

⚘ ⚘ ⚘

Please share your new poem using Mr. Linky below and 

visit others in the spirit of the community—

(Next week Susan’s Midweek Motif will be ~  Smoking Tobacco ~
as 5/31 is World No Tobacco Day.)

⚘ ⚘ ⚘