December Blossom
Fragile in the dark, dank wet.
A protest of premature loveliness.
A flickering flame to be snuffed out
by wind, water and belated frost.
Should we celebrate your presence?
Bringing promise ahead of time?
Or fear for an unsettling future
Where no season is ever foreseeable?
Yet wasn’t it always so?
Costly hopeless protest
Sending a melting trickle down spines
of those who would freeze history.
Suffragettes made Churchill shiver
more than Boers and Blitzkrieg.
Luther King Jr. made Klansmen tremble
more than even Lincoln and Grant.
Gay, lesbian and trans folk at Stonewall,
In the harshest weather, terrifyingly out of season,
fell before brutal baton charges,
but beckoned an unlooked for spring thaw
December blossom will not last.
Yet isn’t such seeming forlorn sacrifice
the defiant pink protest banner
of the Easter kingdom which is to come?
© Ken Stokes
Copyright remains with the writers in each case. Please contact Lynne Ling for further details.
