Dirge for Dead Blooms

 

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Oh, broken bloom, once fairest of them all

Upon your tomb your tear-like tendrils fall

Chum of the thirsty bee, brittle, bereft

Of all the beauty that once you possessed

And hands eager to pluck your bonny grin

No longer reach to marvel at your skin

The flower-field is silent where you fell

Save for the strange-sweet tolling of a bell

Somehow spring, summer, autumn intertwined

Now winter is a garden flower-lined

The bud, the bloom, the bowing of the head

Are not in vain; flowers are never dead

…though Time gestures with seasons, seed to husk

And moves with ease like darkness over dusk

The tomb becomes the womb where Mother Earth

Cradles the petals waiting for new birth

Mourning does not become the lover of

Daffodil, tulip, lupine and fox-glove

Beneath the sheaf of leaf a garden waits

To touch the berth of earth with heaven’s gates

© Janet Martin