Can a Flower Stepped on Go Again to Seed? Q & A

Hey all,
I share these poems from my presentation with you at Lara's suggestion. I hope they will be meaningful to you as writing them has been for me.

<3 Julie

P.S. Mil gracias for the support on projects day! :)



A Flower Stepped On

Can a flower stepped on go again to seed?
Save your words, smotherer, you’re not one to preach.
I am at your mercy, you said, dry-eyed, to me.

As petals shed, I thought, might also memories?
stamped into the ground, flattened to nothing each.
Can a flower stepped on go again to seed?

I never questioned you before, there wasn’t any need,
yet how now shall trampled trust recover from your breach?
I am at your mercy, you said, dry-eyed, to me.

If I plant my feet here, despite fear of repeat,
I must believe your arms will always return my reach.
Can a flower stepped on go again to seed?

I stood ready, my roots torn from you half free
when you swayed me back and snared me with your speech:
I am at your mercy, you said, dry-eyed, to me.

The power I do not want is that to grant mercy
when what I choose may later hurt, the second stomp me teach.
Can a flower stepped on go again to seed?
I am at your mercy, you said, dry-eyed, to me.


~*~*~


A New Love Mantra

I fool that I am likened love to a flower
And the little dainty darling collapsed.
How ever did I expect a thin wisp and a crown
Would not buckle under a weight such as “love”—?
Considering I understood it unbalanced.
It was a lopsided knowledge I ascribed to the flower,
And its pink petals could not carry complexities:
For in the scale’s one basket weighs pleasure, the other trials,
And the two are as sun and shadow: intertwined,
One without the other impossible; light and shade
Both must soak soil, and the bloom draw dual powers.
Since my notion was crushed I have found love to be
Perhaps imperfect, but without flaws, incomplete.

Love is human, love is blind.
It both praises and pines, it fans colored splendor within its quiet self, it cherishes its
every part, content.
It is rambling reckless, it seeks but to please in all its power and powerlessness, it in
turbulence trembles but remembers to trust, it keeps scars uncovered, badges of
progress.
Love does delight in living by the heart, finds truth in mistakes, rebuilds, tears apart and
repeats, and would a thousand times over at need.
It never cowers from challenge although it does fear, its faith bent and bruised never
breaks, it hunts for dim stars on dead nights undespairing, it sinking still thrashes,
bloodied still struggles, fading still rages for life.

Love always prevails.

Now, when I call love a flower again, know it is with
mistakes, with learning, with growth that I water it.
And it is here I wish to plant my claim:
Even a flower stepped on, smote into the ground
Will in time lift its limbs, turn its chin to the sky;
For though in defeat, its cold frame will then mingle
With loam, decompose, and transforming become
A sprout peeping out from the waste,
Not quite too unlike the unfeathered head
The phoenix from ashes does raise.