Cornflower Poem by Roger elkin

there:
a rising nearness, a beacon
its blueness a raggy topknot mix
of indigo, azure and violet
that humbles you to silence
as you stumble across its sudden fulness
signalling from wheat-field trespass

Consider its other names:

Hurtsickle from its tough stems -
that angelicaed haze of greyey-green
blunting the reaper’s scythe

Cyanus, memento of the garland
his namesake garnered as a lad
to frame his love for Flora

Centaurea, after Chiron the centaur
who swathed Hercules’ poisoned arrow-wounds
in braids of sky-blue petal-heads
and was healed

Remember these
and recall this flower
the single bloom to grow in Nagasaki’s aftermath
Hiroshima’s wreath

Cornflower,
talisman of hurt, of youth, of hope