Roots And Flowers

well all the artists steal dont they from each other

this is said a lot here and there now

I see it everywhere

wouldnt be surprised that is, if I could drive along some

unchartered interstate to see a billboard looming every

few miles like Stuckey's used to:

proclaiming the lie that

all artists steal from each other.

this one doesn't .

this one hasn't.

you are not an artist I can hear some people sniff.

you have a right to think so.

but I know I'm not a thief.

the roots of words in my poem are anchored in me.

over long decades

my own set of images ordered a certain way

appearing and reappearing in poem after poem

so that if I speak of oranges I am speaking of

my own experience of the orange my own imagination of the

orange of how cold it was half frozen from the fridge and refreshing

to sip it through a porous peppermint stick at Christmas

there are some, or there is one

Im not naming names as I dont believe in shaming people

who regularly skims the surface of my pond of poetry

and lazily while halfway occupying his brilliant mind makes up his poem's

grocery list from what he sees in my most recent cart, so that I recognize

when I read his poems what he has done with little heart stealing the egg

words barely hatched from my nests

you will not win the poetry carnival that way my friend though you may impress

taking the panda bear home for your girlfriends

my poems are my own. and my internal rhyme that chimes

remembers its way home.

and the roots are still in my garden.

and the music is still my own.

lilac and star together in the sky alone

God gave me to see and to perceive since I first started out on

this road of malediction and yet, beauty.

scatter my grifted petals on your topsoil

they will drift back to me. and the stars drift backwards too

ground of my being,

as they are.

as they were meant to be seen from my peculiar window.

they'll never grow in your climate.

mary angela douglas 22 november 2020

1Mary Angela Douglas

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