Roger elkin - Cornflower

there:
a rising nearness, a beacon
its blueness a raggy topknot mix
of indigo, azure and violet
that humbles you to silence
as you stumble across its sudden fulness
signalling from wheat-field trespass

Consider its other names:

Hurtsickle from its tough stems -
that angelicaed haze of greyey-green
blunting the reaper’s scythe

Cyanus, memento of the garland
his namesake garnered as a lad
to frame his love for Flora

Centaurea, after Chiron the centaur
who swathed Hercules’ poisoned arrow-wounds
in braids of sky-blue petal-heads
and was healed

Remember these
and recall this flower
the single bloom to grow in Nagasaki’s aftermath
Hiroshima’s wreath

Cornflower,
talisman of hurt, of youth, of hope

Roger elkin

http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/cornflower-2/