Rebecca Alexander lives in Seattle, Washington, and works as a horticulture librarian, answering questions from gardeners around the world. The same week that two men murdered Lee Rigby on a Woolwich street, she assisted two college students in Peshawar, Pakistan, with their floricultural research. This poem is a reflection on the choices we make in the face of adversity, and the legacy we leave the world.
Raising Gladioli in Peshawar
(for Gulzar Ullah, Fawad Naeem, and all who grow
in adverse conditions)
your mother dreamed you would grow
upright as a date palm
though your feet were estranged
from Yoruba soil
trainer-shod instead
for tarmacadam and tower blocks
they will say you were a sweet child
mild and pliant if unambitious
until a seething wind of rhetoric
blew through your empty corridors
slamming shut your soul’s last open doors
landing you here, a hollow megaphone
for third-hand hatred
in Peshawar students sift the web
for guidance in building a world of flowers
Gulzar propagates a rainbow,
fingertips dusted with pollen
Fawad breeds in resistance
to pestilence and strife
but you, a continent away-
what have you become,
your palms a red we can’t erase
you have laid waste a life
and with it your mother’s hopes
mourners line a Woolwich roadside
with roses from allotment gardens
and bouquets grown far afield
while in her mind’s eye
the dreamed tree’s roots recoil and fail
and you are lost forever.
