Funeral of the Flowers

A gush of warm air
Caressed the frozen twigs
And left behind miles of
Brittle, flamboyant pink
Which blossomed overnight.

A man
Walked under the curtain of fresh pink,
Enjoying the picturesque scene
Choosing carefully its essence
And snapped photos.
Click.
Flash.
Snap.
In a fruitless attempt
To preserve the fragile blossoms

In a timeless frame.

A gush of warm air
Swept through the pink trees,
Picking off the blossomed,
Petal by petal,
As they floated effortlessly
In the air,
Gliding and dancing
On the invisible stage,
And onto the recent greens
As the man left without a word,
To follow a butterfly,
Attracted to him by the floral fragrance
Lightly grazed on him
From the flowers
By the wind.

The man is deaf
To the flowers' silent cries
As the man who had just admired them
Walked,
Stepped,
And trampled on them,
Leaving them battered.

Up in the greying sky,
A flock of white pigeons flew by
And heard the throbbing sobs
Of the trampled flowers.
They rested on a branch
Listened intently to the story
Of the delicate blooms
And lamented
In their melancholic cry.
But there's nothing they could do
To help the decaying pink
As they called to the man
Who is bewitched by the butterfly,
Oblivious to the birds' calls
That is soon drowned
Amongst the orchestra
Of the cicadas.

The tears of the fallen flowers
Washed themselves
From pink to white.
Wasted, shade by shade.

A little girl heard the flowers' weep
And pulled out her silken handkerchief.
She knelt down on the wet carpet,
Scooped up the flowers,
Laid them softly on her piece of silk
And tied the silk
Into a sack of
Fragrant coffin.

She dug a hole in the frozen earth
Six inches deep
And placed the silk coffin carefully
As if trying not to stir the sleeping flowers.
While she was covering the hole,
Mourning,
She heard a weak whisper:
"Thank you..."
From the flowers' last breath.
The butterfly flapped away,
And the man felt a sense of
emptiness.