Day 584

Once this was a field
abundant with flowers.  Once
your children walked out
after school and gathered them — 
armfuls of flowers they’d bring
to the house so there could be
color, fragrance, life
opening from the bud, 
spreading wide. Now
what you have left
is the past.  Now
the older children still alive
can tell the younger ones
narratives of flowers:
how they begin
deep underground, imperceptible.
Push up through darkness.  Wetness.
Heaviness.  Almost too frail,
too slender.  Driven
by hunger, desire
for light.  Then burst
into sun, mild air,
to unfold the beauty
waiting within them. How
amid all that has been destroyed
will you remember?