#137: Poems with flowers blooming in them
Hello,
Ever since I can remember, I have been a lover of all things floral. I grew up with a mother who adores flowers, and taught me the names of every flower on our walks round the Agri-Horticultural Society of India next to our home in Calcutta. We’d visit the flower shows in winter, admiring the ginormous dahlias on display, pick up plumerias fallen below the tree and make necklaces out of them, and smell the roses (and every other flower that smelt nice).
Flowers taught me that we all bloom and wilt, about the unforgiving cycle of life, common to all living beings. As an adult, my family told me stories of The Mother, the spiritual guide of Auroville, and her love for flowers, how she spent years contemplating the essential nature of different flowers and trees, assigning them names to represent their deeper significance.
I love how important the presence of flowers feels in my life. Every morning, I visit the park near my house and pick up flowers for my home, an act of devotion to soothe the soul. Every fortnight, a box of freshly harvested flowers arrive at my doorstep (Bless you, Shades of Spring!). Flowers = Happy Rohini, and I intend to keep it that way.
And every now and then, a poem with a flower in it arrives in front of me. Here are a few that made me stop in my tracks:
1. Before the Naming by Penny Harter
Yesterday I met some unknown flowers blooming
along the foundation of the neighboring condo—
the former home of an old woman who died some
years ago. I’d never noticed them before, though I’ve
lived here a decade, never witnessed their blossoms.
Like an aging nature spirit, a woodland wise-woman,
my neighbor tended her garden as if each species were
her child. She even rescued the tiny, failing rosebush
given to me when my husband died, found for it the
fertile, sunny corner where it thrived.
She planted her flowers, and they endure though she
is gone into a wicker casket strewn with roses, given
a green burial bordering the woods. Yesterday, I could
not name those pink and white pitchers, but today
I find them in a photograph, name them calla lilies.
Before the naming, seeing. Before the seeing, pausing
long enough to be there, to slowly approach whatever
is calling you into its family, and then to listen for what
it has to tell you—perhaps a name it has given itself,
or the name it has chosen for you.
2. In the Heart of a Rose by George Marion McClellan
I will hide my soul and its mighty love
In the bosom of this rose,
And its dispensing breath will take
My love wherever it goes.
And perhaps she’ll pluck this very rose,
And, quick as blushes start,
Will breathe my hidden secret in
Her unsuspecting heart.
And there I will live in her embrace
And the realm of sweetness there,
Enamored with an ecstasy,
Of bliss beyond compare.
3. A Red Flower by Claude McKay
Your lips are like a southern lily red,
Wet with the soft rain-kisses of the night,
In which the brown bee buries deep its head,
When still the dawn's a silver sea of light.
Your lips betray the secret of your soul,
The dark delicious essence that is you,
A mystery of life, the flaming goal
I seek through mazy pathways strange and new.
Your lips are the red symbol of a dream,
What visions of warm lilies they impart,
That line the green bank of a fair blue stream,
With butterflies and bees close to each heart!
Brown bees that murmur sounds of music rare,
That softly fall upon the langourous breeze,
Wafting them gently on the quiet air
Among untended avenues of trees.
O were I hovering, a bee, to probe
Deep down within your scented heart, fair flower,
Enfolded by your soft vermilion robe,
Amorous of sweets, for but one perfect hour!
4. Tulips for Elsie by Jonathan Potter
The day before you died I thought I'd bring
You tulips for your bedside table, bright
Ones, pink and white, to give your gaze a place
To rest, to make your labor seem less harsh.
I told my daughter so, my four-year-old
Who'd told me I should visit you, who'd hinted:
Your work, this dying business you were in,
Was making worldly things seem flimsy, thin.
The day moved on and tulips left my mind, though,
Until I thought of you again, too late,
The night descending, bringing sleep's regrets.
The morning came and with its obligations
Distracting me, I let my dream of tulip
Fields plow under and turned to hear the news.
5. Flower Poem by Suzy Kassem
Love
Has a way of wilting
Or blossoming
At the strangest,
Most unpredictable hour.
This is how love is,
An uncontrollable beast
In the form of a flower.
The sun does not always shine on it.
Nor does the rain always pour on it
Nor should it always get beaten by a storm.
Love does not always emit the sweetest scents,
And sometimes it can sting with its thorns.
Water it.
Give it plenty of sunlight.
Nurture it,
And the flower of love will
Outlive you.
Neglect it or keep dissecting it,
And its petals will quickly curl up and die.
This is how love is,
Perfection is a delusional vision.
So love the person who loves you
Unconditionally,
And abandon the one
Who only loves you
Under favorable
Conditions.
Recommended Listening:
1. I Believe In You - Kacy Hill ft. Francis and the Lights
2. Sounds For Sleep
3. To Be Won - Good Morning
4. The Wiggles cover Tame Impala 'Elephant'
5. Laundry Music by Kurt Schneider (Please point me to similar sound experiments, if you know of any. Thanks!)
Links of the Week:
2. Am I Part Of The Problem? (This is the most powerful thing I've come across this week. An interactive (and empathic) tool that will walk you through how to apologize)
3. The 8 Different Types of Love
5. Banksy x Bob Ross x Oscar Wilde
6. The Exquisite, Ephemeral Paper Cuttings of Hans Christian Andersen
7. The Qajar series, inspired by the studio portraiture first introduced to Iran in the late 19th century (via)
8. It's time for a to-do list reframe. (YES!)
This is my newsletter: Aishwarya Shrivastav
Aishwarya Shrivastav, who runs the beautiful vernacular newsletter Haftaa, takes over this week's This is my newsletter. She's presented a lovely compilation of poetry, essays, films, music and more. It's such a pleasure to read Hindi kavita for a change in this newsletter.
Read the newsletter here:
https://thisismynewsletter.substack.com/p/this-is-my-newsletter-30-aishwarya
New on the website:
1. Digital Collages by Ayushi Chaurasia
“On a walk along my neighborhood, I found a cacti escaping from the ground, reaching just above the 1st floor of a house, never had I seen a cacti as tall as this one. I reached out to the camera of my phone.** I have curly hair, and when I was young, the ladies of the house took it as a responsibility to tame my sacred wilding. If mummy were going out of town, only a few brave women offered to comb my mane in the morning for school. As I became responsible for my wilding, I hardly ever comb my hair, partly in rebellion and partly because of the fear of losing my curls. My grandmothers still remind me that open curly hair invite demons to live inside of you. So as a result, many demons started living in me and one of them in fact pieced this collage together a showcase of an alternate reality.”
-Ayushi Chaurasia on Self Portrait
See the full series by Ayushi here.
2. Protection by Devika Mathur
My days in afternoon are nothing like yours,
I spend most of it by bird- watching,
Somersaulting colors of the sky,
I sip my chamomile tea to prepare my mind
for the evening’s strangers visit to my head.
My days are nothing like yours,
I adorn my necklaces again and again,
repetitive rituals often act like a slippery therapy.
Quiet and nostalgic.
Moments of velvet sadness.
I end my nights by weeping a little more,
by diffusing some hot coconut oil in my lamp,
to cease the heartache with a portion of leftover food maybe
as insane as it must be.
These are the things I do, to protect myself.
3. hour in which i consider the sky by Trishita Das
"hour in which i consider the sky – mustard bright, although in my house we only eat whole grain – the speckled surface, something yellow and black like a taxi but liquefied. the sky is rippling like my best silk, gossamer fine, half past five, i have lost … i have lost, yes, all sense of time and space. are the weeks still happening, i see day fade into night spark into day blink into – i have grown external, i am a ghost to my body. each plant on my window sill is a body, green and light and breathing – i wonder what it takes to photosynthesise; i am the wind on the surface of the leaves, as light as a laugh, and as beautiful. the world is beautiful, the branches cast shadows that dance like disco lights, and it is beautiful, and the sky is chrome and it burns beautiful. my mother soaks yellow lentils in the big drum, she is singing, and it is also beautiful. i don’t know the words. i am crawling through the walls to follow the hum, this whisper. i am an ant, a fly, the mosquito hovering over the back of her neck. she tries to kill it. i am not there; i am in the living room singing a different song about the colours of the sky. when i step into the kitchen it is full of her traces – the lentils, of course, swollen and fat, the water jug which used to be empty. half past five, do i move like time, in flashes? (i think i am too slow, it is all the weight of limbs and body and wristwatch and mind) i don’t want to eat yellow lentils but they sit there, arrogant and i have lost the war. as an object, a mother is confusing, a middle-aged mother with a propensity to sing songs that are older than me. she has been a person longer than i have been alive. this is the hour for thinking yellow. only the sky is a voyeur – chrome and unforgiving. i am tired of such men, i shut the window. no one is singing, humming. i look in on my mother in her room but she doesn’t pay attention. why must she pay attention? perhaps she has been talking to the sky.
Ending this late night newsletter with a rad line I found on The Snoozeletter:
Good night and go tuck yourselves!
Wishing you all pleasant dreams,
Rohini
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