Summer Meadow in Gotland
        —after Oskar Bergman

The flowers in this painting
are all being pushed in one direction
by some malevolent presence. Their mouths open
in a vast yellow scream.
Massing the meadow like peasants
driven from their huts with cudgels, they seem
bewildered. No one has told them anything.

Revolution is born of such confusion
instructed not by minds like these
but by the grey breath that beats
stem and stalk north by northeast.

The shambling army of yellowness
looks to the sun. They bend their knees,
pull forelocks of petals. Now it has begun.
Even the willows in the distance
fly their green flags advancing
without ever glancing back to whatever
sets it all in motion.

Copyright © 2010 Joan Colby All rights reserved
from Smartish Pace
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission