Deportation of the Dahlia

Deportation of the Dahlia


The winter ice bites hard,
It’s teeth digging beneath
Soil, cracked, and scarred.
But then, a miracle!
A seed, riding that winter breeze,
Floating without a sound,
Settles, in a splitting patch
of that frozen ground.

Then comes spring,
Garish, and green,
And from that seed,
Lightning bolt roots grow,
And strengthen the soil,
Come the melting of the snow.

Then as the seed, brave,
Sprouts from the earth,
He is sensitive, but strong,
In the hour of his birth,
And as the daisies blossom,
Bright, and new,
It takes a little longer,
For his colours to come through.

June is here, and the bees are longing
For his pollen, and the honey it will yield,
Whilst in the air, a whiff of deceit,
But the children playing in the field,
Brush past his petals with scampering feet.

Eventually though, the sky deep red,
A hot crimson afterglow,
Of a season, twice dead,
Dulls the colours of summers child,
Leaving him wild, and unfed,
Again.

One afternoon, you take a walk,
You stroll along, and talk
To the birds, who shout back from the trees,
“We don’t believe you, we just don’t believe!”.
Then on to the river,
That wooden hut on the bank,
Where the shopping trolleys, the bodies,
The knives, have all sank.
There, your eyes catch a spot of brown,
From the hide, where the floorboard creaks,
A plucked dahlia, following the water down.
Autumn is here, and it reeks.

“This is my country!”, you say,
With the glint of a tear in your eye,
You watched that dahlia blossom,
And then you watched it die.