Poetry

"A Time for Flowers"
​By Ellen Wright
Why write now about the delicate nature of lilies,
             their blush, their grace,
                          when men and women lose their lives in the streets,
                                        and a police officer is so brazen as to murder
                                                       a black man in front of witnesses
                                        holding cameras, pleading for the man's life?
This is the summer we channel the spirits
              of the great civil-rights poets like Dudley Randall,
                            who wrote about the Birmingham church bombing of 1963
                                           and the deaths of Addie Mae, Cynthia,
                                                           Carole and Carol Denise,
                                           whose coffins, newspapers show, were draped
                            in black and white flowers.
This is also a time for flowers
               like the dozens of red roses adorning the coffin
                              of George Floyd, or the blue lilies
                                             and yellow mums that draped the coffin
                                                           of Ahmaud Arbery,
                                             or the one with hints of lavender that draped the coffin
                              of Breonna Taylor, or the hundreds that draped the coffins
               of dozens of others who died away from the public eye
                              after protests, during protests,
                                              because they were thought to be protesting,
                                                              or while they were jogging,
                                              or while they were behind closed doors
                              minding their own business.
Yes. This is a time to write about flowers,
                                            the exuberant spray of white lilies
                                                            that silently say this life mattered.