To Each His Own

The gardener looked at the flower
Thinking how pretty it would look next to her roses

The mathematician looked at the flower
Noticing its unique symmetry

The Christian looked at the flower
Observing God in it

The environmentalist looked at the flower
Concerned for its future

The teacher looked at the flower
And devised a lesson for her class

The businessman looked at the flower
Calculating how much money he could sell it for

The criminal looked at the flower
Plotting to steal it

The archaeologist looked at the flower
Longing to dig it up to see what was in the earth beneath

The artist looked at the flower
While painting a beautiful picture of it

The lover looked at the flower
Wanting to pick it for his mistress

The poet looked at the flower
And wrote this

-Neal Zetter

-Photo by Sue Harpham

Pressed flowers
Formed an army.
A bonanza troop
Patrolling the field.
Harmoniously.
The only noise
Was the wind.
Blowing abundantly
Like ripples of ghosts
Soothing the land
With their chants
Of peace.

-Sue Harpham

Summer Meadows

Cooperation is the buzzword;
harmonious consensus.
Opulent symphonies with
Nature the sentient conductor.
Poppy, ranunculus and kingcup
rising and falling in gentle cadence
with cornflower, salvia and forget-me-not;
a fragrant patchwork in the sweet grass,
like an eco rainbow, tipping the earth,
radiant with inner beauty.
A ballet of delicate blooms
dressed in powder-puff tutus,
thoughtfully choreographed,
dancing to the tune of sun, wind and rain.

Wildflower meadows echo the vibe
of cottage gardens in a bygone age….
Green spaces flourishing
with aphids, beetles, butterflies,
moths and caterpillars,
bumble bee numbers multiplied tenfold –
that gentle, hypnotic hum reassuring
as they delve in the throats of foxgloves.
The project enhances both water and soil,
a winning outcome for biota.
This wild beauty brings closer
the goal of a greener future.
Just stop and look!
Paradise stretches out
before your eyes,
a triumph of rewilding.

-Margaret Royall (from her forthcoming collection Practising Floriography)

After the Long Dry Spell, New Dress

Last summer I rediscovered wild flowers.
Alfalfa, butter ‘n eggs, milkweed, clovers of
all sizes and sweetness, many spontaneous
bouquets dropped petals on my table.
All those years of drought and concrete.
Forgotten.

This year I am the bud. I remember my love
of swirly skirts, the kind when you twirl
flows out from your waist. Old-fashioned,
Fairy clothing. I always used to garden
in embroidered cotton dresses, comfortable
through heat waves and washable.

Long ago my husband would gift
me flowers, more fragrances, the better.
He would slide his hands up my calf’s silk,
tease dress hems, my thighs when I was lying
in our hammock beneath blue spruce, sipping champagne,
or reading.

There was always celebration; bouquets, mysteries,
wonders-revealed; a slender stem, a woman’s
leg, the sculpting fingers of a man defining it,
firefly-lit dusk. White skirts glow in the dark,
opening like petals of some nocturnal
luminous flower.

-Rachael Z. Ikins

Waiting for Bees

Crocus fingers snow-tatters.
Sun coaxes purple, orange.
Cups brim, succulent saffron
offered to the sky.

Earth rotates.
Shadows wake.
Winter’s breath reminisces
with evening.
Flowers pack their cups,
pollen tucked.
Heads bow.
Darkness spits
snow.

Day after night after
day they set their table, cloth ragged, main course
glistens gold,
seven days.
They wait for bees

who never come.
Wilt, heartbreak-fists’ curl
and starvation,

swallowed by Earth’s dry
empty mouth.

-Rachael Ikins

Ode to a Cactus Flower: Calling Me

Petals call my fingers,
mouth, stroke against
my cheek.
Cool silk alien.

Silence roars magenta
ecstasy, each dancer
swirls a wider skirt,
hides my face, those
taffeta folds.

Lavish.
Luscious.
Lipstick-slathered-on-glass, you
wester, melty
sunward.

Palm-stuck skin, my fingernail worries one spine, painful pleasure.
Trickling droplet, my blood’s
color,

your velvet throat.
Swallow
me.

-Rachael Ikins

Meadow

Such loveliness is a summer meadow
What need for rubies, emeralds or gold?
Overflowing with red clover and vetch,
A greenness of grass,
Sprinklings of buttercups and trefoil
This is the meadow.
Glitter of early dew
A thousand diamonds
All jewels are here
The amethyst of orchids,
Dock flower corals
A rose quartz of ragged robin
And six butterflies blue as sapphire
Such loveliness is the summer meadow

I want to write about
Washing on the line, all blue
The colour of mallows, pale pink
The smell of salt in the air

The summer verges
Throwing up poppies, long grass
And an old fat tyre

Walking through wet grass
Blinded by the buttercups
A long stormy night

six spires of foxgloves
edging the summer meadow
dancing, close to grass

in the embroidery of the meadow
the tiny flights of damselflies
kingfisher blue

=Bronwen Griffiths

Wildflower

They call you a weed,
Unwanted,
Growing
in unwelcome places
Between concrete blocks,
You blossom,
In overgrown fields,
You bloom,
Your petals
A riot of colour.
Untamed,
You may not be cultivated,
But you are a wonderful
Wildflower.

-Anthony JP

-Christina Chin

Wildflowers of The Dry Well

Dawn scatters its dandelion self amidst the clouds. Not your song, you say nay to the music stuck in your head. Not your song because this one your mother used for sending her babies to sleep. Her night cooled around the dry well agape. Still people hear wildflower voices from the well. You want to go back to sleep and live, but light strikes you awake and deceased.

=Kushal Poddar

-Jane Cornwell

Lesser Celandine

One celandine opens her throat
eight-petals to a sunbathed sky

then another and another butter yellow
butterfly yellow a glistening dawn

a lawn so full no foot no mouse or bee
can pass between their heart-shaped leaves

leaves some tear out but here they stay
so I can swallow in the yellow day

drop by drop them on my tongue
sing their tiny yellow song.

-Kerry Darbishire

Flower Faery

Foolishness and madness
i did not surrender
Reality finally dawns
ruling with a daisy crown
and a hyacinth sceptre

#SlamWords
-Fi

-Linda Ludwig

-Linda Ludwig

Periwinkle Perhaps

The complexities of the wildflower
I have no name for
occupies this Sunday.

One bird perchance, may be an insect,
has conspired this floret
to efflorescence on my monsoon staircase.

The petals stare at my chance door,
church door for the orphan.
Breeze bells a mellow music.

Sometimes a person yeilds to cruelty
because he desires to be kind
and cannot bear his angel incarnation.

Some Sunday I feel lazy, call my mom,
and as usual her number
reallocated to a new user blasphemes.

This Sunday I wants to weed.
Destroy something I have nothing against,
except the lifespan of a wildflower weighs less
than the impression it leaves on my conscience.

-Kushal Poddar

spring light
a ball disperses from her tiny fist

【千秋訳】
春の光
ボールが彼女の小さなこぶしから消える

-Christina Chin

garden seat
and sweet pea perfume
ploughman’s lunch

Editors Hidenori Hiruta, Ben Grafström and Team.

https://akitahaiku.com/serow/

-Christina Chin

caravan song
dandelions scatter here and there.

クリスチアン　チン(インドネシア)
隊商の歌
たんぽぽはここにもあそこにも四散する
Published in Spring Saijiki 2019

finger painting red poppy fields
Tuscany sunrise

トスカーナの日の出指で描く赤い芥子　　(tr. 千秋)

poppy fields
across the grasslands the timbre of sitar

シタールの音色横切るポピー畑　(tr. 千秋)

「シタールの音（ね）草原をこえ芥子畑（sitar no ne sougen wo koe keshi-batake) 」（Christina Chin, tr. N.U.Hanseki)

wind coursing
through red hills
sweeping poppies

the random trills
of violins
red poppy fields

spring fields
the fragrance of
wildflowers underfoot

wildflowers…
in my hand the glint
of morning dew

a scent of bluebells
in the baby’s clutch
wildflowers

-Christina Chin

garden seat
and sweet pea perfume
ploughman’s lunch

Editors Hidenori Hiruta, Ben Grafström and Team.
Serow

-Christina Chin

HAIGA

rolling pasture —
milk thistles in the mouth
of a calf

Fresh Out: An Arts and Poetry Collective.
Editors Eric Lohman and Alvah Allen.

-Christina Chin

Cowslip

Green rosettes, crinkly, tongue-like
leaves lick the ground.

Tube-like, egg-yolk yellow flowers
cluster at ends of tall, green stems.
Cowslip ball

“Tisty tosty, tell me true,
who shall I be married to?”

Throw the balls foe an answer.

-Paul Brookes

Viola Tricolor

Ophelia says:
There is pansies, that’s for thoughts
And I’ll only smile as I think of you.

Some call her
Heartsease
Heart’s delight
Tickle my fancy
Jack-jump-up-and-kiss-me
Three faces in a hood
But to me she’ll always be
Love-in-idleness.

The hermaphrodite’s draught
Dripped on my droopy eyelids
And I’d left the antidote
Dormant
In the honey pot.

I dreamt of pollination by bees.

And so
Accidentally shafted
By Cupid
I could but love you, my child.

The imperial votaress
Averted her gaze
And walked on
Unblemished
Whilst I sat up to rip
Bedlamish wisps
Of rue flowers from my hair.

-Spangle McQueen

Daisy Queen

Driven to distraction
the daisy Queen
dressed in scattered silver
and silk stockings
dancing with
her dandelion king
to be with him
everywhere

-Fi
#SlamWords

..bees and honey..

lean on the old fence,
watch the bees bumbling.

there are wild flowers here
and brambles.

she cuts those mid afternoon, makes
a tidy pile to clear later.

it is the thirteenth, we are quite lucky.

the bite comes up big and red, swollen.
remarks are made, feeling odd. sleep early.

bees and honey; other insects.

-sbm.

..hedgehog..

have been out looking
for you
amongst the knapweed
amongst the flowers

cut those brambles that may stick
to your prickles

we left it longer
the tidying this year
so as not to be a slave to it
and rewards are endless

good it has become a fashion with the climate
changing
it always did make sense to me
others thought not in the past

we have a a past, it keeps reminding me

rewilding.

=sbm

..the garden in montgomery…

i like the look of wild growth
i like the old garden in montgomery
although my passenger declared it a mess
i worked with a girl this year who studies
wild things, sustainability
a difficult spelling
she says this wild way is best
modern
culture has nutured tidy in the
minds
though i notice a surge in love
for wild flowers
to resist the mowings along the roads
yesterday i left the tall grass and watched
the butterflies there
my daughter gave them names
while indoors again find
no observers book of moths
or butterflies
now back on line
i may
ebay
did the bird survive?
we must try to save the trees
we must try to save it all
regards
have a pleasant day

-sbm.

-Kate

Trills On One Shamrock

Rain curses the diet Coke can
you left on your porch, tilts it, and
a puny frog reveals its dark green,
so dark that you mistake it for black
the way you see monsoon firmament,
and it is never black. You do not know
the names of those shades. Sun goes
into the palliative care. A Parkinson’s ray
trills on one shamrock. The noise
tastes like early morning robusta.
You do not know what these mean.

-Kushal Poddar

-All art and poetry by Linda Ludwig

Wildflower inside,
Wildflower out.
Many other wilds in their own
Boxes, living their own lives.
Around this another
Much larger box,
With all wilds together.
They work to lift the lid.

-Lydia P. Wist

The field awash with golden yellow
Wild buttercups take back their space
Amethyst thistles trim the picture
The poppies wild, bend to the light
All with hearts shimmering
Towards the benevolent sun
Glistening on raindrops that look like diamonds
A true garden of jewels

-AilsaCawleyPoetry 2020

The Primrose

Never a single flower
I always gather thirteen
or more in a bunch,

On May Day, I hang
small primrose bouquets
over my windows and doors

Allow only white magic in.
Braid it into my horses’ manes,
plait iballs to hang
from the necks

of my cows and sheep.
I know you, Hedgewitch
inhale your primrose oinment .

You rub its oil on my eyelids,
so I can see you better.
We drink Primrose wine
I gift you primroses,
Never trust what you say
or do. Perfume is fickle.

-Paul Brookes

Bios and Links

-Fi

Fiona H lives in Ireland and is rather shy so would prefer to let the writing do the talking. She is a former Humanities student, now she studies humanity through creative writing.