Flowers and Umbrellas

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The umbrella is open, but the rain

is not ready to fall. It shies and waits,

waits until is already late to come.

Spring is near and I feel shy of the sun.

I kneel down by a flower patch and the dry

sidewalk feels cold against my hands.

I keep thinking of bees, buds and umbrellas,

all in one thought.

Flower memories slap my face like a blast

of winter storm.

I scroll down the images and my brain is smitten

by the possibility of love within thought.

Images come, go and change me slowly

like spring opening its buds.

A careful dancer. I have time to think

of flowers and ballerinas, I have time

 to touch the bare, infertile ground.

Somehow I know the earth gives me time,

because she is getting ready, she is not timid

of new buds.

I rise from the ground relieved to know how much

I don’t know, and how that much is what, somehow,

a flower knows.


And again it is umbrella, bee and flower

in my brain, all in one thought.


Poem winner of context Mandala Books published in The Science Creative Quaterly.