Featured Images: were taken at the local Kindergarten, where the school’s gardener lovingly maintains the beautiful garden, and she excitedly pointed out that, despite it being the start of winter, there were 2 sunflower plants ‘defying the odds’. and actually thriving and blooming … I smiled at her joyful enthusiasm, however inwardly I was silently weeping for those still suffereing in wartorn Ukraine.
So here today I am reposting “5” of my “Sunflower” poems relating to the “Ukrainian” war.
We Are the Carrier Pigeons
Are our Sunflowers wilting?
Can they survive, prosper, and regrow?
They will need more
Genuine assistance
Our promissory words
And tuneless birdsongs
Are not enough
We cannot forget them
We all need to speak up
Let our world of voices be heard
Draft a poem, a letter
Of protest, today, tomorrow
We are the carrier pigeons
May our messages for peace
Chime over the people of Russia
Defiantly (a Haiku)
Sunflowers do bloom
Through the war of destruction
Bravely defiant
An Unseeded Renewal (a Tanka)
Sunflowers of peace
We have not forgotten you
The war has not stopped
Killing fields are still on fire
Young stems need help to survive
A Banner of Sunflowers
Bann
look!
up there
above the War’s
darkest clouds
there is a blue banner
embroided with sunflowers
swaying
through a hole
in the eastern sky
bearing a message
of ‘Hello’
or is it ‘Goodbye’?
a sweeping reminder
from our Ancestors
“we feel your suffering and pain
from the merciless hard rain
blood filled rivers and cratered plains
smoke filled skylines and cracked windowpanes”
“however, we also know
beyond the broken horizon
the sunflower seeds of hope
will germinate again
and future seeds for peace
will regenerate a new campaign“
Sunflower Seeds (a Tanka)
Blue skies were mellow
Fields were peaceful and yellow
Sunflowers grew free
Then foreign tanks squashed their seeds
On tomorrow’s scarred harrows
Ivor Steven (c) May 2023
Ivor.Plumber/Poet 