deepundergroundpoetry.com
Graveyards
I think I spent a few centuries
watching you pull weeds
tons of helpless herbs
and you took everything
that came to hand.
Nothing escaped your fingers
like a scythe reaping bodies
and limbs and heads
like floating dandelions.
The daisies lying on the ground
hopeless poppies, crushed,
lilies, yellow with fright, undone.
Nothing escaped your eyes
like electric scissors
that had come from outer space.
You, slovenly person, you
always destroying and undoing
what grows in freedom.
You, who will die and become
the fertilizer needed for everything
that grows and you wanted to pluck
from the eternal soil that covers your grave.
You, who are already sure
that you will always be the gardener
chosen for all hells...
PAR
Published 9th May 2023
Author's Note
"Plants are injured when we pluck flowers. Over millennia of evolutionary generations, the plants today have finely honed the mechanisms for sealing the damaged cells at the point where we pluck the flower. The cells at the point of injury may die, but they are sealed quickly, within minutes by the cells below. The whole plant becomes aware, through auxin [ hormone] transportation all round the plant via the water flow from roots to leaves. The particular plant may have inherited a mechanism to save the part immediately below the injury; or this whole stem dies, but the rest of the plant remains alive and functioning."
Lilian Hayball-Clarke is a retired teacher/ professor of Biology with an eclectic interest in people and things in the world and in the Universe.
Lilian Hayball-Clarke is a retired teacher/ professor of Biology with an eclectic interest in people and things in the world and in the Universe.
All writing remains the property of the author. Don't use it for any purpose without their permission.
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Anonymous
- Edited 29th May 2023 7:45am
10th May 2023 12:25pm
<< post removed >>
10th May 2023 12:28pm
