 Roses, Convolvulus, Poppies and Other Flowers in an Urn on a Stone Ledge, by Rachel Ruysch (Netherlands) 1680s Rachel of the Flowers Rachel Ruysch, 1664-1750 You knew at a young age your life would be surrounded by your father's artifacts: bones, bugs, stones in orderly disarray his lab filling you with floral dreams until you, the student, became the teacher of light emerging from stone. Profusion of peony reds with dark seeded centres roses tumbling, waterfalls over pearl lustre gems of silken leaves petals hovering before they fall. You dreamed out windows contemplating light falling at dusk others painting beneath you worked while you out-mastered the masters of the day. One, two, ten children later still your hand drew emerging light from canvas arranging, placing tumult of carnelian, ochre, azure the green of the forest where there was no forest, blushing convolvulas that would not bloom again until O'Keeffe dreamed. Carol Lee Saffioti-Hughes Professor emerita of the English department from a campus of the University of Wisconsin System, also a retired librarian who served in a log cabin in the north woods of the state. Poetry published in three countries and several languages including translation into Chinese; some recent work appears in Of Rust and Glass; Awakenings Project, Rosebud, Moss Piglet, Poetry Hall, The Ekphrastic Review, and forthcoming from the San Antonio Review. Most recent chapbook is forthcoming from Cyberwit Press, When Wilding Returns. ** To Rachel Ruysch Regarding Roses, Convolvulus, Poppies and Other Flowers in an Urn on a Stone Ledge Have here you painted somone else's art who chose and cut each coloured stem to length envisioning the sum as soul and heart becoming briefly joy of beauty's strength... ...in which, though each indeed would stand alone, all came to know, by master plan, embrace as means with which, like finely chiseled stone, they found by greater hand their time and place? Or did you deep inside see ledge and urn with this bouquet that speaks to living plight as canvas where beholder could discern, by slender ray of faintly echoed light, the splendour and fragility of bloom in dimly lit, forever waking room. Portly Bard Portly Bard: Old man. Ekphrastic fan. Prefers to craft with sole intent... of verse becoming complement... ...and by such homage being lent... ideally also compliment. Ekphrastic joy comes not from praise for words but from returning gaze far more aware of fortune art becomes to eyes that fathom heart. ** Her Secret Garden In her dream, her legs entwine a gorgeous floral bed: she tumbles and tangles with poppies, twists herself into the bluest of bindweeds while her head turns on a pillow strewn with more swathes of morning glory and a peppering of wild nasturtiums. Her eyelids waver, rising and falling as sun rays bleach the blinds but her mind still lingers in strange meadows. Though her hands grasp sheets, her fingertips trail curls of leaves, stems, pollen before she senses the stab of cacti, the snarl of thorns catching the nape of her neck. She wakes, she stretches. A chalk-blue butterfly alights on a foxglove, grown tall and purpling between her shoulder blades that begin to itch. Her scratching shivers a hoverfly deeper into the petals of an overblown rose that is rambling across her back. At last, she stirs, standing to wash, slow breathe, dress. Winged fritillaries flutter, shift, settle. Balancing on a crinkled leaf, a sleek dragonfly ripples across her wrinkled skin joining that flow of bright tattoos swarming beneath her blouse. Dorothy Burrows Based in the United Kingdom, Dorothy Burrows enjoys writing poetry, flash fiction and short plays. Her poems have been published in both online and print journals, including The Ekphrastic Review. Roses, poppies, convolvulus and stone slabs can be found in her garden but she does not possess an urn. ** Haiku A scent of coming death Fated Rose Mary Boehm Rose Mary Boehm is a German-born British national living and writing in Lima, Peru, and author of two novels as well as six poetry collections. Her poetry has been published widely in mostly US poetry reviews (online and print). She was twice nominated for a Pushcart. DO OCEANS HAVE UNDERWATER BORDERS? (Kelsay Books July 2022) and WHISTLING IN THE DARK (Taj Mahal Publishing House July 2022), are both available on Amazon. Her seventh collection, SAUDADE, is going to be published by Kelsay before the year is out. https://www.rose-mary-boehm-poet.com/ ** Adventure Is a Bouquet Snipped from a garden, roses breeze the room. They live urned near a stone ledge. Adulthood is sledding the snow-sculpted hill in the park until bottom. The past acts like a ghost crawling from a fireplace no one cleaned. What keeps returning is the strange navy glow of a Cub Scout shirt and shock of the first coat and tie laying on a bed to wear for grandfather’s funeral. The future is chained to the past—now ashes. Adulthood is not a fair exchange and one way of staying alive is to avoid a stone ledge while sleeping with red poppies and to remember the soul looks like other souls walking a gaslit street. Another way to rise above the topsoil is to stop counting the remaining days like morning glories, their tender seeds once buried in pots. Today, the pharmacist is a goddess in her white jacket, eyes flowered dark. She inserts the needle. John Milkereit John Milkereit resides in Houston, Texas working as a mechanical engineer and has completed a M.F.A. in Creative Writing at the Rainier Writing Workshop. His work has appeared in various literary journals including Naugatuck River Review, Panoply, San Pedro River Review, and The Ekphrastic Review. His next full-length collection of poems, A Place Comfortable with Fire, is forthcoming from Lamar University Literary Press. ** Next Thursday Having spoken to you about this, I don't like it ! What satisfies me is this, expecting casual rules. After being content alone, we are together. This Thursday, Yes. Next Thursday, I will be there. "If she apologized to him, then he lied to me.” I'm handling this, left handed, Oh right you are. She hated pepper and salt, they are no good for you. Why must you do that, the dog doesn't like it either. The cat licked his feet, he must be cold. You need to find a professional, not me. She was surprised at the wit, then fainted. The office closed, the dead line busy. It didn't open, while the garage door worked. The paper was late, conditions warranted change. Making a game of it, what is for dinner ? Statements made were false, but the heart was true. Sex is so over, not really ever existing for me. Yelling a lot, but never meaning much by it. Holding fast, the storm passed slowly. Snap-shots of life, frames that never stop shooting. A lesson learned disappeared, replaced by an iron. No pictures allowed, the past is naked. The bed collapsed, it wasn't anyone's fault. A mouse ate some cheese, and is now fat. Do you really want to go to jail, that's illegal. The teacher left town to come back. It’s a win-win, do it your way. Check it off the list, The Park. We are all alike, but not on the same day. Remember those flowers, they were beautiful. MWPiercy MWPiercy is a writer and artist. ** Thank You for the Flower Arrangement Your extravaganza displays as how you love me. A red rose threatens to shed a petal, spreads open almost lazy. Poppy nods. Your card, yes I know you miss me, tucked into a drawer. I believe I miss you more. All lights off after this short day. Dark dims both reds and green. We don’t know, do we, when we’ll see each other again. Weeks, maybe months, so I’ll scatter spent blooms on the stone-cold garden. I promise to wash the vase, store it, hold for what you deliver next. Tricia Knoll Tricia Knoll is a Vermont poet whose husband lives 3,000 miles away. Her new book One Bent Twig (poetry about trees and climate change) is available from Future Cycle Press in January, 2023. ** Resisting Flowers from Roses, Convolvulus, Poppies and Other Flowers in an Urn on a Stone Ledge, by Rachel Ruysch (Netherlands) 1680s My feet are cemented in terracotta pots; I remained fixed inside during Spring’s sunny spectacles. Summer adds its balmy lethargy. Autumn chases me to the woodstove. All unrestrained becoming, blossoming and final blazing is close. but I don’t take my place in the cycle of beauty. In this dark season, winter gardeners, rescuers, work to loosen the soil of potted people. They sow life in the great indoors, stoke my joy with nature’s designs. Density of dark green tangle pushes mightily at every angle, heavy, veined with white strain firm, full of recent rain makes a vine backdrop, a vigor and volume black-drop to frame in contrasting bright asymmetric, organic light: Yellow lily, pink peach rose, orange gerbera daisy, bluebell, buttercup, begonia, royal blue convolvulus, explode in irrepressible chaotic colour. Lavender trumpets leap in spiral steps prepare the pulpit for a towering orange proclamation: Do not mourn for the dying of the season; Do not believe the outdoors holds the only life and reason. I shrink down to the size of one creature and roam among the lovely growing things. Sheila Murphy Sheila Murphy writes poems to get closer to things. She is a musician, a pastoral minister, a spiritual director, cancer patient, retreat leader and adventurer. She has published poems in Presence: An International Journal of Spiritual Direction and The Ekphrastic Review. Sheila lives in coastal Maine, is married and has two college-age children. ** Gasconade With a slight nod and Mona Lisa smile rose announced herself the most beguiling bloom of the bouquet. Chortling with a thorny voice she stretched her long stem to the bottom of the urn and sucked as much water as she could, gulping with pleasure. After shaking her shell-pink petals rose continued regaling her fellow flowers , telling them how she was named for Aphrodite’s son Eros. It is said Aphrodite moved the letters around and anointed the showy bloom--Rose. Rose could tell she was wearing on the watery poppies so she then declared herself the sexiest anagram of all time- how with her canted neck and stem, she appeared wanton and would draw everyone’s gaze with wild abandon. The other flowers ignored rose and smiled in their own beautiful way. They only kept her around for her scent which usually made up for her excessive boasting. Ursula McCabe Ursula McCabe lives in Portland, Oregon. Her work can be seen in Piker Press, The Avocet, Oregon Poetry Association’s Verseweavers, Bluebird Word, and The Ekphrastic Review. ** Distilling life - Rachel Ruysch So many blooming, bountiful years ahead for this painter’s steady hand and inherited eye for detail. Petals perfected, insects inspected, dutifully rendered with precise delicate touches. Her brush delivered milk thistle, a bold blue nasturtium, a blush pink rose, and a central peony a glow to outlast mere fashion and taste. A tiny butterfly alights a foxglove, and below, ants climb, and a geometric spider approaches a white rose: danger and movement amid leaves and stems. But there’s darkness branching beyond where the light falls. Cuttings freighted with paint. Awaiting appreciation, her life stills before the canvas, her hand then immortalises death-in-progress, flowers wilting to fade before the task of capturing them is complete, live on suspended in a moment. Nothing is left of the flowers, their vase, the insects, the buildings, or artist. Nothing left except this oil painting with fine cracks running through it, and the artist’s name. Both become a history-less record of inconsequential yet timeless ephemera rolling together like convolvulus across uncertain centuries without remark. Rebecca Dempsey Rebecca Dempsey’s recent work has featured in Streetcake Magazine, Defuncted, and Unstamatic. Rebecca lives in Melbourne / Naarm, Australia, loves art, writing and film, and can be found at WritingBec.com. ** Baby Boy, Born at 34 Weeks Your bloom is so great and so small, you weigh only four pounds and seven ounces; my heart, you burst from my body, a blossom still perfect. Every life is a flower plucked from ignorance; we thrive and wither through our seasons in this earthen urn, beautiful in our arrangement of certain decay. My son, flourish bright and brave, for one day you, too, will fade. You are my only heavenly blue morning glory in this wilted world. Heather Brown Barrett Heather Brown Barrett is a poet in southeastern Virginia. She mothers her young son and contemplates life, the universe, and everything with her writer husband. Her poetry has appeared in The Ekphrastic Review, Yellow Arrow Journal, OyeDrum Magazine, AvantAppal(achia), Black Bough Poetry, and elsewhere. Find her on Instagram @heatherbrownbarrett ** Floriography, or the Poet Writes a Love Letter to a Botanist Rose: Years ago, on a whim, I ordered a rose-flavored latte – it came all white and pink, foamy milk petals spread to the rim, and I remember, my mouth tasted of rose syrup for hours afterward. It was Valentine’s Day, and I didn’t know you yet – but later, the day we walked through the garden amongst the rose bushes, you told me that the chemical compound that gave roses their scent was actually named for them – rose oxide – and that it was detectable to humans at concentrations in air as low as five parts per billion. And with so much more than five parts blossoming around us, I thought about that latte, and how so much of our sense of taste is tangled up in smell, and how much smell is tangled up in memory – and then you smiled, and something bloomed in my throat because it was Valentine’s Day again, and I smiled back, because I could just taste that syrup on my tongue. Convolvulus: Before you, I preferred to call this one morning glory, or belle de jour – but these days, you have me appreciating the Latin name, meaning, to wrap around, to bind together, to interweave – instead of ribbons, I imagine hands fasted with flower stems, growing yellow-centered blossoms ringed with a spring sunrise, bright white streaking into blue – I imagine palms turning, and Convolvulus tricolour guiding our fingers into the right patterns, the right twists and gaps – teaching our fingers how to form the shapes they need to lace together. Poppy: I’ve never been a very good sleeper. That night we camped in your trailer – do you remember? – you fell asleep smelling like a field, and I stayed awake with a cup of tea, thinking of Persephone. The poppy was created for her sake, you know – her mother wasn’t a good sleeper either, so Persephone made sure that wherever she walked, her favourite flower blossomed from her footsteps. The tea she cultivated from it gave her beloved mother restful sleep and sweet dreams – and in the summers, Persephone would send bouquets of them down the Styx, to give her beloved husband the same. And I remember – that night as you slept, and I drank my tea, I got to thinking that really, it was Persephone’s love that made the world go ‘round – not roses, but poppies. Other flowers: Nasturtium for celebration, peony for prosperity, foxglove for confidence and pride – floriography should be its own language family, with as many dialects as we have tongues – but still, with as many species and tones and models as we have, it’s the semantics that get us – whatever we try to say, however we try to say it, we can only hope that someone understands. Urn on a stone ledge: What I mean to say is, please understand, I really like you – What I mean to say is, It doesn’t feel like enough to just say that I really like you – What I mean to say is, I wish I could arrange words the way you arrange trees and taxa, or a florist arranges the petals in a bouquet – What I mean to say is, Flowers communicate with auxins and terpenoids and mycorrhizal networks, and compared to those little miracles, language just feels so clumsy – What I mean to say is, please understand, I never wanted a garden until I met you. Kimberly Hall Kimberly Hall (she/her) received her master’s degree in behavioral science from the University of Houston-Clear Lake. Her poetry has appeared in online publications such as First Flight and Sappho’s Torque, as well as in several ekphrastic poetry anthologies. She still gets the idiomatic butterflies whenever anyone mentions that where she can hear it. ** Flowers in an Urn The flowers have been left unchanged, thin line between forgotten and uncared for. Yet In the privacy of that urn, they whisper and nudge each other, the pot too small, the ledge too high precariously perched, Yet spilling over, Some sprightly, some drooping, some morning glories some narcotic poppies, some shocking roses others shying, perfumes intermingling, heads colliding, too snug in that home like fetuses in a womb, ephemeral about to be replaced about to be watered sprayed with freshness or wilted with weight of bearing the beauty of the world on their shoulder in the midst of tragedy. Akshaya Pawaskar Akshaya Pawaskar is a doctor-poet hailing from Goa, India. Her poems have been published in Tipton Poetry Journal, Shards,The Blue Nib, North of Oxford, Indian Rumination, Rock and Sling, among many others. She won the Craven Arts Council ekphrastic poetry competition in 2020 and was placed second in The Blue Nib chapbook contest in 2018. She is the author of two poetry chapbooks, The falling in and the falling out (Alien Buddha press, 2021) and Cocktail of life (bookLeaf publishing, 2022). ** Scientist An exacting chemist he believed in daffodils and God in that order abhorred sentiment paged the dictionary for pleasure and talked it so words like abhorred come naturally to me when speaking of him and words like “Confound it, boy!” came naturally to him when speaking of me Cleaning out his house we found the urn empty still dusty God only knows where he dumped mom’s ashes We know he loved her as we salvage jonquil survivors from neglected gardens to place in the dusty water of mother’s urn Joe Cottonwood Joe Cottonwood has repaired hundreds of houses to support his writing habit in the Santa Cruz Mountains of California. His latest book of poetry is Random Saints. ** The Golden The turning-point between afternoon and eve, when energy runs out and colours give in, reluctantly, hop-skip-jumping along still lifes where techniques tell you to remember what grows and what urns, and the pyramid pictures of a past, that never seems erasable, they grow into questions. Hence, when was the last time you were in love at all - and when did the stems stop to curve less wildly? The sun lights to golden on a dark backdrop, that cannot seem to stop, yet cannot seem to stay green no more either, the clearness, a clarity, no, it’s sharpness rather, that’s left with wound-up light-ness, made up, to show everyone how well one flowers, when left with light-footed torment, a small part of a tall world, a gold world, unreal maybe, for when the body has gone, the mind needs a cushion, the feet in the grass, while the white wine headache seems more pleasing, still, days are lost later. The plan for tomorrow is to hang all skirts on a rack and feel the only truth when with you or with them, hence, hold my hand in a carriage or make it to my legs, there, while you never drove, while a mutual friend said you made me a portrait, and now I can only think of how much this must have cost you. Flower monsters power monsters, and in the end sharp brushes need cleaning too, in a way, non-fiction jettisoned, as fiction-life makes it workable to survive, without big tears, or airy-fairy feelings. I don’t know why you sold the blue velvet chairs, the marine bed, but I would never have come so far alone, after you. And I just wanted to tell you how I enjoyed the golden. Kate Copeland Kate Copeland started absorbing stories ever since a little lass. Her love for words led her to teaching & translating, her love for art & water to poetry…please find her pieces at The Ekphrastic Review (plus Podcast & translations), First Lit.Review-East, GrandLittleThings, The Metaworker, The Weekly/Five South, New Feathers, Poetry Barn. Her recent Insta reads: https://www.instagram.com/kate.copeland.poems/ Over the years Kate has volunteered at various literary festivals and at Lisa Freedman’s Breathe-Read-Write workshops. She was born @ Rotterdam some 53 ages ago and adores housesitting @ the world. ** Because of the flowers there's the wind Vistas, stains, dreams of life, bits like growing hair to be arranged as a centerpiece - now I have made a canvas out of a barren landscape. The body enters, afraid: absurdly, I spilled her crudity over it. I have cut the watercolour myself, when she broke my fall with lightning, to ease the white that lightning splashes. Angelo Colella Angelo 'NGE' Colella lives in Italy, where he writes poetry and prose in Italian and English, makes analog collages, asemic writings and DADA objects. ** photographs I have lost both my father and mother, yet it’s the attempted suicide of my mother that seeps into my work. about the time yellow forsythia blooms. grandmother Mariska bakes kalács with raisins, my favourite. memories of me as a young girl, tearing cellophane of the Easter rabbit. the red ribbons. sweet bread and chocolate, two very different stains. I thread these stories together, of pain and loss and childhood memories. the work encircles itself as our conversations about wild flowers, life and death become the seeds of my photographs. Ilona Martonfi Ilona Martonfi is a mother, an activist, an educator, literary curator, poet and an editor. Born in Budapest, Hungary, she has also lived in Austria and Germany. Martonfi writes in seven chapbooks, journals across North America and abroad. Curator of the Argo Bookshop Reading Series. Recipient of the Quebec Writers’ Federation 2010 Community Award. Martonfi lives in Montreal, Canada. The Tempest, Inanna Publications, Spring 2022, is her fifth poetry book. ** Rustic Rose This is an illuminated folio from the inherent old testament of the flower – when the bee ruled the breeding spree, before the advent of man’s hybridization campaigns. The queen of bloom – incarnation of ultimate attar, epitome of beauty, symbol of love, was one of the first to be welcomed aboard. And the crossbreeding delivered designer trendy points: glossier look, harder petal, grander format, and – a scientific surprise – less fragrance, if at all. The invisible, the magic of attar, was gone. What to hail, what to mourn, given that the symbol affects the beholder, then we are faced with a shocking importer – love without magical hues, practically - of no use. O, rustic rose, you are looking at us from this hues’ team-building exercise with wide open child eyes as a direct objection to the adults’ extreme demands from the ever young essence of nature; your humble stare is at once fragile and firm – davidian spark vs. goliathic gloom, brush and nature working hand in hand to intercept any existential torment: you knew – losing your fragrance meant losing your language, and not just any, but the lingua franca of the horticultural world. Essential threat. Any linguist’s fret. I joined the inquest by experiment – I made a bouquet in your image, set it in a matching dark vase, and studied it without bias. Here the results: in breach of the 17th century tick impasto your fragrant speech leaked and soared and overwhelmed the thin whim of the bouquet at a coat of paint distance from me. Hence, the conclusion: the roses I bought at the hip flower market for their elegant sculpted headgears, expressed no attar utterance, towered mute, ‘cause they were engineered; while your inborn artless beam storied the essence of the honeyed conception ‘cause it used nature’s power of creation. As a footnote: this little horticultural episode speaks not just for the blossom queen, but for all endangered languages of anything that blooms – plant, smile, idea, spring – flourishing on earth as it is in the genesis, and in this colorfully unassuming emphasis. Ekaterina Dukas Ekaterina Dukas has studied and taught linguistics and culture at Universities of Sofia, Delhi and London and authored a book on medieval art for the British Library. She writes poetry as a pilgrimage to the meaning and her poems featured numerous times in The Ekphrastic Review, Ekphrastic Challenges, Poetrywivenhoe and others. Her collection Ekphrasticon is published by Europe Edizioni, 2021. ** Now you have left me You gave me these blooms, but—see-- they droop now. Painted in hues of light, bellbine bound me to you…yet descends now into dusk. That peony, token of my bashfulness (you knew me far too well), now shows only brokenness. Were the poppies meant, perhaps, to comfort me? If so, they hang their heads in scarlet shame. Those pure white rose-petals flare as sign of innocence lost; you chose red, red roses to tell silken lies of love. One flower alone speaks thorny truth-- of all your treachery: the crimson rose for heart-deep mourning now you have left me lone and lorn. Lizzie Ballagher Never having had a collection of her landscape poetry published, Ballagher is currently working on a sequence of poems about Exmoor (UK). Recently one of these was chosen as winner in Poetry on the Lake's 2022 formal category with a pantoum about Tarr Steps in mid-Exmoor: https://www.poetryonthelake.org/competition ** Fragrance Muriel gathered all the artificial blossoms, the stray plastic flowers that were scattered around the cemetery after storms, took them home and stuck them in a dark squat vase she'd found in a charity shop. A shrine of sorts to her own displaced life. It sat in a dingy unloved corner of her ugly room, providing a bright spot of unnatural eternal floral freshness, gaudily cheerful. No matter how many times she sniffed the bouquet it remained unscented. Still she persevered, convinced there would be a sweet fragrance to be inhaled, one that would transport her to other times, other places. Later, when they came to clear the rented room, the woman who picked up the vase and its contents paused and briefly looked at its dust encrusted edges before it too went into a large black bin liner along with Muriel's other meagre possessions. Emily Tee Emily Tee writes poetry and flash fiction. She's had pieces published online in The Ekphrastic Review and elsewhere and in print in some publications by Dreich, as well as several poetry anthologies. She lives in England. ** Fragile Dancers we cannot see the hands that clutch the stems nor the heads bowed in weariness only the multi-hued skirts are draped from carefully arranged branches dancers' feet tucked up inside them shy stamens and pistils dwarfed by shades of red and white with one lone cerulean blue representing the prima donna who now sits overwhelmed by the chorus Adrienne Stevenson Adrienne Stevenson (she/her) lives in Ottawa, Ontario. A retired forensic scientist and Pushcart-nominated poet, she writes in many genres. Her poetry has appeared in more than forty print and online journals and anthologies in Canada, the USA, the UK, and Australia. When not writing, Adrienne tends a large garden, reads voraciously, and procrastinates playing several musical instruments. ** Where Sits the Urn Whooshing midnight train mounts Bird cries where sits the urn- Holding glory in white and pink, Convolvulus falling, softly Like a thin warm rain By the stone ledge where sits the urn. Wishes in poppy colour outshining life, Fragrances unfurling In rose petals filling the urn- The untimely return of moments, Deception, overflowing of ashes Into shape of a day yet to come. Each hour increasing the emptiness, Sky looping inside the moon- Endless On the bedside windowsill Where stood the urn once. Abha Das Sarma An engineer and management consultant by profession, Abha Das Sarma enjoys writing the most. Besides having a blog of over 200 poems (http://dassarmafamily.blogspot.com), her poems have appeared in Muddy River Poetry Review, Spillwords, Verse-Virtual, Visual Verse, Sparks of Calliope, Trouvaille Review, Silver Birch Press, Blue Heron Review, here and elsewhere. Having spent her growing up years in small towns of northern India, she currently lives in Bengaluru.
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