Crushing the Flowers

I began that poem again.

You know the one – where the flowers bloomed

Among the grass, and your small feet

Tripped dancing through the

Colour-speckled green

Like the touch of a fairy on the grass

Now here, now gone.

Kissing the grass, fondling the flowers

Your dancing feet in the sunlight

That was the poem

The poem that is never done.

And I, stumbling after

Heavy-booted, crushing down

The flowers, being too clumsy

To let them be.

Petals broken and strewn in the grass

Like jewel-tears

Marking where I passed.

My boots were not part of the poem, though.

I did not want to hurt the flowers. 

It was not my fault

That I could not dance.

Copyright B Purkayastha 2015