Purple Periwinkle Petals

Purple periwinkle petals

Upon the trees and scattered on the street

Adorn this space of fired bricks and reinforcing metals

With softness, scented sweet

Like honey on a summer’s day.

Their influence is subtle and discreet

When juxtaposed against constructed gray,

Yet still reveals our hardening conceit.

Purple periwinkle petals

Upon the trees and under striding feet

Perhaps will make us stop and think of how our progress meddles

With biomes once complete.

 

This poem was inspired by light violet flowers that were blooming in trees near my apartment not too long ago. They filled the trees, and eventually covered the ground beneath them. At the same time, there is a fairly large construction project happening on a neighboring plot. With my tendency toward environmentalism, I couldn't help but think about how projects like that, whether a building, a road, or something else, carve up, cover over, and isolate pieces of the natural world, often, perhaps, to the detriment of the ecological relationships and systems that existed long before our construction equipment arrived.