POEM - Interflora

A poem I wrote a few weeks ago,  about not seeing the natural beauty of things, people and events. Once the pain of any storm, such as a pandemic, is over something positive can emerge out of the apparent ruin.

This is what
you have been waiting for
this weed, its not an aberration
that has sprung up
in your flower bed
but now that it is here
in its abundance
it is transparently clear
that
it was never about the fuckin flowers!
vulgar charlatans, cultivars
and beauty whores cut from our imagination
poetic muses are different
they are things that remain invisible
until the moonlight arrives
to show you
as if never seen before, nor given
a Latin name, nor grown en mass in the Netherlands
these are the things that we don't want
that we often will run miles
to be far away from
the sort of dirt we'll wash
rhythmically and ritually
from our hands, dowsing them in sanitation
because they contain new vulnerabilities
transparent threats upon our skin
that are somehow now 
in the very air we breathe.

Though I may say
that I want this to leave
I sort of want it to stay
as a weird fact or reminder, to let its weeds grow
amongst the carefully manicured blossoms
that I once thought normal
robbed
of their ability to amuse
heaven
out of its morose confinement
to bend a knee, to land at my door
no knocking, to just walk in
with a smile and view my front room
sit down and start
comparing notes with me
on how bitter the tears have been
and on how things
are now finding a way of
bursting up through the fissures
the hopes
amid the helplessness
the tender realm
burnished in the purple, yellow halos
of bruises, now appearing
in places where I have no recollection
of ever having
been knocked.

written mid - March 2021
STEPHEN LUMB