Stop And Smell The Roses

This is the twenty-eighth entry in my series of song-inspired poems! This week’s poem, as you can probably tell from the title, does focus on nature, but also art, in what I think, at least, is a pretty interesting scene. It was also, of course, inspired by this week’s song, ‘Avant Gardener’ by Courtney Barnett. I hope you enjoy reading it!

First Poem In This Series: To Witness, To Behold, inspired by ‘Sowing The Seeds Of Love’ by Tears For Fears

Previous Poem In This Series: Togetherness, inspired by ‘Promise (Reprise)’ by Akira Yamaoka

Stop And Smell The Roses

Don’t look at the bristles;
your eyes should follow
the footprints they make,
every shuffling step
from one inch of fibre
to the next–call them ghosts
if you want the significance
to last, or lingering remains
to appease your critical brain.

Go ahead; you’re allowed
to criticise, because my arm
connects to the hand
that owns the fingers
between which colour
is created.

I shouldn’t trivialise:
this is captured life,
after all, a snapshot
of a landscape
neither of us have seen
but we know the lines,
can quibble over how
the water truly flows;
and we both quiet
at the rosebush,
each dab of lavender,
as if they need the oxygen
more than we do.

And when I fall to my knees,
and cannot see the last stroke,
ripping through nature with a streak
of white–call it lightning,
to give it immersive meaning–
I know, at least, that you
have seen it all: complete.

If you linger too long
on the meaning of this,
or that, or simply wander
through landscape made material
yet equally immaterial,
and do not come to my side,
I forgive you;
it captured me, too.

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