Easter Flowers

In Easter season wildflowers dance and sing
Or so, from lifted heads and swaying stems, it seems.
The lilies of the field…Indeed these toil not,
Although the breeze may set them spinning,
But they rise in grace across the earth
Before returning to the earth.

And, leaning low into the breeze,
One hears ecstatic echoes
Of a host of petalled spirits,
Those who saw a heaven in a wildflower
Or the outbursting of a trodden star,
Who even for a moment
Stood alone and free before a private vision.

How their seed is scattered,
Flung into the winds
That lean down from high places,
Keening through the canyons of the centuries,
Pale riders to the sea.
Even now, it seems the same soft sea

From which Hans Christian’s little mermaid
Turned away to walk as a woman into the wind,
Forever to follow her vision
To whatever abyss awaited there.
She paid the price. Her steps were scars,
Each blade of grass just that.
And yet she limped the land with tearless eye.

How many blades of grass for every flower
Gathered in the wind? She learned
And they learned too, each one.
Their still-ecstatic echoes sound,
The trace of souls alone and free,
alone and free, alone and free…

These sure and shining spirits
Surely need no requiem from us?
Or if we must, then not some grave remembrance
But lifelong celebration, light of tongue and tread.
Like lilies of the field…
Still, in this serene and graceful gathering
I, tenderly though tearless-eyed, would tender

These few leaves of tribute to their crown
And thereby lay my lowly flowers down.