10 Poems about Flowers
The word flower thrives in every language, says Kate Farrell, and Julia Fiedorczuk tells her poem, “bloom, bear fruit / come to life.” Galway Kinnell reminds us that “everything flowers, / from within, of self-blessing; / though sometimes it is necessary / to reteach a thing its loveliness.”
It’s hard to hold everything these days. It’s hard to concentrate, at least it is for me, once again. It’s good to stop and ground ourselves, with poetry and flowers, though I think. I hope.
And I hope, too, that today you know your loveliness, that you flower, that your strength surprises you, and that you thrive.
1. Flowers by Wendy Cope
Some men never think of it.
You did. You’d come along
And say you’d nearly brought me flowers
But something had gone wrong.
The shop was closed. Or you had doubts —
The sort that minds like ours
Dream up incessantly. You thought
I might not want your flowers.
It made me smile and hug you then.
Now I can only smile.
But, look, the flowers you nearly brought
Have lasted all this while.
— from Serious Concerns
2. Please Don’t by Tony Hoagland
tell the flowers—they think
the sun loves them.
The grass is under the same
simple-minded impression
about the rain, the fog, the dew.
And when the wind blows,
it feels so good
they lose control of themselves
and swobtoggle wildly
around, bumping accidentally into their
slender neighbors.
Forgetful little lotus-eaters,
solar-powered
hydroholics, drawing nourishment up
through stems into their
thin green skin,
high on the expensive
chemistry of mitochondrial explosion,
believing that the dirt
loves them, the night, the stars—
reaching down a little deeper
with their pale albino roots,
all Dizzy
Gillespie with the utter
sufficiency of everything.
They don't imagine lawn
mowers, the four stomachs
of the cow, or human beings with boots
who stop to marvel
at their exquisite
flexibility and color.
They persist in their soft-headed
hallucination of happiness.
But please don't mention it.
Not yet. Tell me
what would you possibly gain
from being right?
— from Application for Release from the Dream
3. Thanks to Flowers by Kate Farrell
Not only the cultivated ones in parks
and gardens, unfolding immaculate petals
on a terrace or trellis, and not just
the wild ones, kissed by elegant birds
in jungle foliage, or brightening roadsides
and meadows, blossoming anyplace that anything
can blossom, but thanks also to flowers
blooming in paintings, on carpets, pottery,
fabrics of dresses and draperies or wherever
the real or invented colors and shapes
of flowers lift the mood of a scene,
as they are snipped from bushes, gathered
in cordless bunches, tied in ribbons
or arranged in rare bouquets for precious vases.
Perfect by nature for gift and centerpiece,
they perfume ballrooms, backyards and prairies,
and, indoors or out the window, they gladden
celebrations and refresh every country
and season, for, even in iciest winter.
The word flower thrives in every language,
adorning what everyone says and imagines
with the beautiful thought of flowers
which teach by timeless example
that life goes by anyway; you might as well
flower.
4. Relentlessly Craving by Julia Fiedorczuk
poem, poem be strong
like a shock wave, Grieg’s Concerto in A Minor
put down roots, find the source, bloom, bear fruit
come to life, poem, I need your blood
poem, poem be as perilously lovely
as the drunken woman in the painting by Munch
what counts are only the base colors, yellow, black, red
what counts is fire
there is a time for hope
and a time for despair
what counts is fire
if you have no flesh
you do not know love
nor do you know death
poem, poem be in the sun
in the eye of the world
in the turning of bread into motion
in the constant decay that is the condition of all synthesis
in the blood
fire, be
there is a time for hope
and a time for despair
what counts is fire and ice
poem, poem be like the dark night of the soul
Translation from the Polish by Bill Johnston
— from Oxygen
5. Song for Nobody by Thomas Merton
A yellow flower
(Light and spirit)
Sings by itself
For nobody.
A golden spirit
(Light and emptiness)
Sings without a word
By itself.
Let no one touch this gentle sun
In whose dark eye
Someone is awake.
(No light, no gold, no name, no colour
And no thought:
O, wide awake!)
A golden heaven
Sings by itself
A song to nobody.
6. Saint Francis and the Sow by Galway Kinnell
The bud
stands for all things,
even for those things that don’t flower,
for everything flowers, from within, of self-blessing;
though sometimes it is necessary
to reteach a thing its loveliness,
to put a hand on its brow
of the flower
and retell it in words and in touch
it is lovely
until it flowers again from within, of self-blessing;
as Saint Francis
put his hand on the creased forehead
of the sow, and told her in words and in touch
blessings of earth on the sow, and the sow
began remembering all down her thick length,
from the earthen snout all the way
through the fodder and slops to the spiritual curl of the tail,
from the hard spininess spiked out from the spine
down through the great broken heart
to the sheer blue milken dreaminess spurting and shuddering
from the fourteen teats into the fourteen mouths sucking and blowing beneath them:
the long, perfect loveliness of sow.
7. Praying by Mary Oliver
It doesn’t have to be
the blue iris, it could be
weeds in a vacant lot, or a few
small stones; just
pay attention, then patch
a few words together and don’t try
to make them elaborate, this isn’t
a contest but the doorway
into thanks, and a silence in which
another voice may speak.
— from Thirst
8. A Blessing by James Wright
Just off the highway to Rochester, Minnesota,
Twilight bounds softly forth on the grass.
And the eyes of those two Indian ponies
Darken with kindness.
They have come gladly out of the willows
To welcome my friend and me.
We step over the barbed wire into the pasture
Where they have been grazing all day, alone.
They ripple tensely, they can hardly contain their happiness
That we have come.
They bow shyly as wet swans. They love each other.
There is no loneliness like theirs.
At home once more,
They begin munching the young tufts of spring in the darkness.
I would like to hold the slenderer one in my arms,
For she has walked over to me
And nuzzled my left hand.
She is black and white,
Her mane falls wild on her forehead,
And the light breeze moves me to caress her long ear
That is delicate as the skin over a girl’s wrist.
Suddenly I realize
That if I stepped out of my body I would break
Into blossom.
– listen
9. Flowers by Wendy Videlock
They are fleeting.
They are fragile.
They require
little water.
They’ll surprise you.
They’ll remind you
that they aren’t
and they are you.
10. Flowers by Cynthia Zarin
This morning I was walking upstairs
from the kitchen, carrying your
beautiful flowers, the flowers you
brought me last night, calla lilies
and something else, I am not
sure what to call them, white flowers,
of course you had no way of knowing
it has been years since I bought
white flowers—but now you have
and here they are again. I was carrying
your flowers and a coffee cup
and a soft yellow handbag and a book
of poems by a Chinese poet, in
which I had just read the words “come
or go but don’t just stand there
in the doorway,” as usual I was
carrying too many things, you
would have laughed if you saw me.
It seemed especially important
not to spill the coffee as I usually
do, as I turned up the stairs,
inside the whorl of the house as if
I were walking up inside the lilies.
I do not know how to hold all
the beauty and sorrow of my life.
— from Orbit
Consider pairing this post with Eleven Flower Quotations, or Three Poems About Sitting.
On a personal note, it’s been a month of flowers, in our household, with Rob’s art exhibition opening on May 8th and previous to that our anniversary and my birthday. The flowers in the photos for this post were a combination gift for all of these and will likely end up in one of Rob’s paintings at some point.
Thanks for reading!
Shawna
