The comments will be below the second picture. Enjoy!
First Flower of the Season
First flower of the season,
Fragile fay,
You’re like a speck of snow that
Tried to stay
Except you’ve sunken roots to
Hold your place
And love the morning sun on
Your pale face.
First flower of the season,
Frail and white,
After three months of brown, you’re
Quite a sight,
I doubt you can conceive what
Joy you bring
To winter weary folks who
Long for Spring.
Yesterday, Kellie and I went on a hike. It was not our first hike of the year, but it was the first one during which I was actively looking for flowers. Well, good luck! We found a few small clumps of purple and white flowers. Most of them were droopy and unopened as the one in the background is in the second picture. Some of the purple ones were fully opened but were facing the ground and very hard to photograph. This one clump of white flowers had two fully open blooms, facing up. Kellie's picture of one of them is above the poem, and my picture of the other is below the poem right above this paragraph.
This morning, I leapt from the bed, ran straight to my desk, and typed First Flower of the Season. I have not changed a word from what I typed around seven. I had lain in bed for an hour or more thinking of the poem and had it all in my head--each and every word. These sixteen lines are about all that I can keep straight in my head, so I had to get them out. As soon as I was done typing it up, I asked Kellie to read it. After she read it and made a few other comments, she said, "So, when we are walking, and you see things, these poems pop up in your head?"
I answered, "Yes, that is the way it tends to be for me."
She said, "You have a special way of seeing the world."
I could only reply, "I suppose."
Looking for poems in the world and seeing them everywhere you look is special, but special is not always good, beneficial, or pleasant. Often thinking of ways to put images into words is aggravating, frustrating, and downright mind-numbing. When the words come quickly and easily as they did with the white flowers, putting them to paper (actually on a computer screen) is a release of built up pressure that is nearly indescribably pleasurable. However, when the words do not come and the pressure builds over time, my mind becomes like a bomb with a short fuse, and I feel like I have to go farther and farther away from anyone around me so that they will be safe when I explode--mentally at least. Thus, my gift, if you will, of special sight is also a curse that constantly drives me to isolation. I do not know why I chose to reveal that to you today, my friends and readers, but Kellie understands and, perhaps, that is why she is the one who loves me.
If you enjoyed the poem, please drop me a line in the comment box or via email. Even if you didn't, feel free to tell me why in the same places. I am a big boy, and I take criticism very well.