NAPOWRIMO , PROMPT 11 , GRANNY OF THE RED ROSES

Happy Saturday, everyone, and welcome back for the eleventh day of Na/GloPoWriMo 2020.

Our featured participant for the day is wordshophop, where the hay(na)ku prompt for Day Ten resulted in a seemingly simple but powerful poem.

Today’s poetry resource is a twitter hashtag, #InternationalPoetryCircle. You’ll find tons of videos under this hashtag of poets all over the world reading individual poems. If you’re looking for something to do this weekend, why not create your own video, and add it to the parade?

Our optional prompt for the day is based on the concept of the language of flowers. Have you ever heard, for example, that yellow roses stand for friendship, white roses for innocence, and red roses for love? Well, there are as many potential meanings for flowers as there are flowers. The Victorians were particularly ga-ga for giving each other bouquets that were essentially decoder-rings of meaning. For today, I challenge you to write a poem in which one or more flowers take on specific meanings. And if you’re having trouble getting started, why not take a gander at this glossary of flower meanings? (You can find a plain-text version here). Feel free to make use of these existing meanings, or make up your own.

Happy writing!

Granny of the Red Roses

“You know, we had a love marriage,
and he would woo me with roses, bright red,
dripping with love.  But all men are philanderers.
Up there, he is now involved with a woman
a coquette, you know, woe!
Woe on her!”  My seventy-nine, going on eighty granny
would whisper, looking around furtively.

Often I would feel something stirring in her;
 a sweet unrest throbbing in her chest,
some happy youthful recollections visiting her at night,
  some sounds and long forgotten names
beckoning her like homing swallows,
and she would smile.

I knew she was sailing,
journeying along in a sea of memories
to that pine forest,
under which a besotted couple sat, lost in each other.

Long after granny had shed her earthly garments,
her physical presence replaced by a gilded picture on the wall,
garlanded with marigold flowers, one day we, the kids
rummaged through her meagre belongings.
 And gasped.

Between the folds of her pristine white sarees,
 a pheran* long abandoned , and a patina- crusted photo
 of   a handsome lad, lay a handful of roses- blood red,
 their fragrance long frozen.

 I visualized her as a young girl,
being chased by a scrawny lad [my granddad, whom I never saw]
 among the tawny fierceness of the Deodar trees,
offering her a rose in a tender gesture, of everlasting love
which she clasped in her slender hand.

Did she blush?
 Did his hands brush her cheeks fleetingly?
Did she gush a thousand little words of gratitude
as the Blue Whistling Thrush sang and sang?
 Is he still wooing her with red roses up there- his first and last crush?

*Pheran is a long cloak that both men and women wear in winter months in Kashmir [India]