Something about Flowers

Down there in the dawning light
she stands like a frozen gesture:
a shadow frozen on the ground until
she recalls the necessary motion
and turns towards the morning.
The light grows like a flower blooming
into readiness for such a pollination.

Thinking we know the steps
we step forward for the dance.

I do not know your name, or the designs
your fingers could carve
turning this bare formless stone
into headstones for flower-strewn graves
or stone shapes we can name and touch.

I will not turn back again.
I remember all their names.
I recall how their skin
felt like the petals of flowers.

Walk back down that hillside
back into the valley where
the stream stumbles over rocks.
Stone worn smooth, carefree
bearing no trace of history
just worn smooth by water.

The river of time rubs lines
into our smooth faces,
puts creases into our skin.
The weight of memory distorts our bones.
We learn how to shuffle
bent under the weight of the past.
Sometimes memory collapses
when there is too much to recall.

All those faces lost to time.
A procession files past us
as we sit with blank eyes
staring inward at what was
and regret for what could have been.

I take the responsibility of keeping
all that has passed from my shoulders.
I do not want to bear
the weight of all those times
and what I ought to have done.
Memories fade like flowers.

Bring back some flowers from that valley,
I remember the wooded hillsides
full of bluebells, occasional snowdrops,
sometimes a sudden bright primrose.
It felt somehow wrong.

I don't like to pick flowers.
Those frightened faces on the trains
not knowing, herded into bunches
by guards who did not notice
each face was a flower, just like them
or parents, wives, lovers and children.
In camps withered, or mercifully dead.

The flowers in the vase, leaves
crumple into brown, the petals fall,
bare skeletal stalks like dry
dead bones left in ashy chambers.

Human cruelty is so easy, a matter
of forgetfulness, a refusal to feel
the pulse of every living thing.