Fallout Flowers

• Fallout Flowers

Fallout Flowers

There are weights in the pockets
Of the coats in the hall
Ways of those who returned
Who had stayed
To wrap the lamplight walls
Round their shoulders
Through the webs of their fingers
And their thumbs
Stay the gallows of the garden sheds and stay
Away from the water's edge

In the fallout zone
The flowers still grow
But there will be no more
Love me, nor ever not to love

There are days between lines
Colored out of the squares
Of the weeks, of the months
Days that strayed and caked themselves in clay
Second skins to shed in place
Of bodies folded away
Second winds, who will roar
Howl and bay, and need some place to stay

In the fallout zone
The flowers still grow
But there will be no more
Love me, nor ever not to love

There is time in the earth
You can smell when the rain
Drags its nails through the soil
A scattered sea just trying to be whole again
There are husks hidden down
Who had staked all their love
On those few tiny drums who only knew
The one song that would break through

In the fallout zone
The flowers all know
The wait underground is so long
(and that is why we glow)

In the fallout zone
The flowers still grow
But there will be no more
Love me, nor ever not to love

© Brendan Bonsack
November 2015

1. That Line in the Sea
2. Your Child has the Heart of a Poet
3. Maralinga Blue
4. Life Insurance
5. Future First Mutual Life Insurance
6. Fallout Flowers
7. Closing Time
8. Grace
9. Will You Take me Down to the River?
10. Intimacy and the Tiny Drum
11. Old Lovers
12. A Letter from my Grandchildren
13. Remembrance

The Sea Will Take it From Here
Released June 2016