Poppy Flower Quotes

But pleasures are like poppies spread, You seize the flower, it's bloom is shed; Or, like the snow-fall in the river, A moment white, then melts forever.

When they asked some old Roman philosopher or other how he wanted to die, he said he would open his veins in a warm bath. I thought it would be easy, lying in the tup and seeing the redness flower from my wrists, flush after flush through the clear water, till I sank into sleep under a surface gaudy as poppies.

I could understand the moon leaning across a bar on skid row and asking for a drink, but I couldn't understand anything about myself, I was murdered, I was shit, I was a tentful of dogs, I was poppies mowed down by machine-gun fire I was a hotshot wasp in a web I was less and less and still reaching for something, and I thought of her corny remark a night or so ago: You have wounded eyes.

Sir?” Kitay asked. The magistrate turned to look at him. “What?” With a grunt, Kitay raised the crate over his head and flung it to the ground. It landed on the dirt with a hard thud, not the tremendous crash Rin had rather been hoping for. The wooden lid of the crate popped off. Out rolled several very nice porcelain teapots, glazed with a lovely flower pattern. Despite their tumble, they looked unbroken. Then Kitay took to them with a slab of wood. When he was done smashing them, he pushed his wiry curls out of his face and whirled on the sweating magistrate, who cringed in his seat as if afraid Kitay might start smashing at him, too. “We are at war,” Kitay said. “And you are being evacuated because for gods know what reason, you’ve been deemed important to this country’s survival. So do your job. Reassure your people. Help us maintain order. Do not pack your fucking teapots.

Loneliness clarifies. Here silence stands Like heat. Here leaves unnoticed thicken, Hidden weeds flower, neglected waters quicken, Luminously-peopled air ascends; And past the poppies bluish neutral distance Ends the land suddenly beyond a beach Of shapes and shingle. Here is unfenced existence: Facing the sun, untalkative, out of reach.

When they asked some old Roman philosopher or other how he wanted to die, he said he would open his veins in a warm bath. I thought it would be easy, lying in the tub and seeing the redness flower from my wrists, flush after flush through the clear water, till I sank to sleep under a surface gaudy of poppies. But when it came right down to it, the sink of my wrist looked so white and defenseless that I couldn't do it. It was as if what I wanted to kill wasn't in that skin or the thin blue pulse that jumped under my thumb, but somewhere else, deeper, more secret, and a whole lot harder to get at.

There is sweet music here that softer falls Than petals from blown roses on the grass, Or night-dews on still waters between walls Of shadowy granite, in a gleaming pass; Music that gentlier on the spirit lies, Than tir'd eyelids upon tir'd eyes; Music that brings sweet sleep down from the blissful skies. Here are cool mosses deep, And thro' the moss the ivies creep, And in the stream the long-leaved flowers weep, And from the craggy ledge the poppy hangs in sleep.

Summer set lip to earth's bosom bare, and left the flushed print in a poppy there.

What a pretty little flower. What a pretty poppy. Pick it and watch it bleed. Not so pretty any longer… Poppy.

The great events of life often leave one unmoved; they pass out of consciousness, and, when thinks of them, become unreal. Even the scarlet flowers of passion seem to grow in the same meadow as the poppies of oblivion. We reject the burden of their memory, and have anodynes against them. But the little things, the things of no moment, remain with us. In some tiny ivory cell the brain stores the most delicate, and the most fleeting impressions.

Joseph would reach out to me occasionally, the same way the desert blooms a flower every now and then. You get so used to the subtleties of beige and Brown, and then a sunshine-yellow poppy bursts from the arm of a prickly pear.

Autunm eats its leaf out of my hand: we are friends. From the nuts we shell time and we teach it to walk: then time returns to the shell. In the mirror it's Sunday, in dream there is room for sleeping, our mouths speak the truth. My eye moves down to the sex of my loved one: we look at each other, we exchange dark words, we love each other like poppy and recollection, we sleep like wine in the conches, like the sea in the moon's blood ray. We stand by the window embracing, and people look up from the street: it is time they knew! It is time the stone made an effort to flower, time unrest had a beating heart. It is time it were time. It is time.

I thought it would be easy, lying in the tub and seeing the redness flower from my wrists, flush after flush through the clear water, till I sank to sleep under a surface gaudy as poppies.

We owned a garden on a hill, We planted rose and daffodil, Flowers that English poets sing, And hoped for glory in the Spring. We planted yellow hollyhocks, And humble sweetly-smelling stocks, And columbine for carnival, And dreamt of Summer's festival. And Autumn not to be outdone As heiress of the summer sun, Should doubly wreathe her tawny head With poppies and with creepers red. We waited then for all to grow, We planted wallflowers in a row. And lavender and borage blue, - Alas! we waited, I and you, But love was all that ever grew.

But show me just this one thing, my darling, i seek a heart stained like a poppy flower.

but the flower continued her beauty preparations in the shelter of her green chamber, selecting her colors with greatest care and dressing quite deliberately,adjusting her petals one by one.She had no desire to emerge all rumpled, like the poppies. She wished to appear only with full radiance of her beauty. Oh yes, she was quite vain!

The subject of today’s lesson will be plants.” He sat down, pulled off his satchel, and emptied the contents onto the grass. Out spilled an assortment of plants and powders, the severed arm of a cactus, several bright red poppy flowers with pods still attached, and a handful of sun-dried mushrooms. “Are we getting high?” Rin said. “Oh, wow. We’re getting high, aren’t we?” “I’m getting high,” said Jiang. “You’re watching.

[Lennie meets Joe - he works out that she was named after John Lennon] I nod. "Mom was a hippie." This is northern Northern California after all - the final frontier of freakerdom. Just in the eleventh grade we have a girl named Electricity, a guy named Magic Bus, and countless flowers: Tulip, Begonia, and Poppy - all parent-given-on-the-birth-certificate names. Tulip is a two-ton bruiser of a guy who would be the star of out football team if we were the kind of school that has optional morning meditation in the gym

From out of the ground a eulogy grows and becomes a poppy.

The gardens were brilliant with summer magic, with plump cushions of forget-me-nots, lemon balm, and vibrant yellow daylilies, surrounding plots of roses shot through with garnet clematis. Long rows of silvery lamb's-ear stretched between large stone urns filled with rainbow Oriental poppies.

In the deep spring when the grass was green on fields and foothills, when the lupines and poppies made a splendid blue and gold earth, when the great trees awakened in yellow-green young leaves, then there was no more lovely place in the world. It was no beauty you could ignore by being used to it. It caught you in the throat in the morning and made a pain of pleasure in the pit of your stomach when the sun went down over it.

Scarlet! It is the first colour I have seen in months. Or so it seems. Scarlet. A little wild poppy, of a red so sudden it made my blood stop. I kept saying the word over and over to myself, scarlet, as if the word, like the colour, had escaped me till now, and just saying it would keep the little windblown flower in sight.

Pleasures are like poppies spread You seize the flower its bloom is shed Or like the snow falls in the river A moment white, then melts forever Or like the Borealis race That flit ere you can point their place Or like the rainbow's lovely form Evanshing amidst the storm Nae man can tether time nor tide The hour approaches, Tam must ride

For no one really knows what color is, where it is, even whether it is. (Can it die? Does it have a heart?) Think of a honeybee, for instance, flying into the folds of a poppy: it sees a gaping violet mouth, where we see an orange flower and assume that it’s orange, that we’re normal. 39.

In its place is a framed print of a pressed poppy. It depresses me. Pressed flowers are an attempt to hold on to something that was once alive. They’re desperate and lonely.

And the eye became a body, the murky heart of a rose. The sinister shadow of an orchid. Or the indolent poppy balanced behind the ear of Baudelaire.

Scarlet the poppies Blue the corn-flowers, Golden the wheat. Gold for the Eternal: Blue for Our Lady: Red for the five Wounds of her Son.

What a pretty little flower. What a pretty poppy. Pick it and watch it bleed. Not so pretty any longer...

Poppy flowers were blooming all around Tikany.

The poppy flower: A flower of eternal sleep, a narcotic to the wounded soul, a remembrance of the fallen soldier. —DB

She began to scroll through her Pinterest board. Flowers blossomed on the screen. The golds and ochres first. Golden peonies, apricot honeysuckle, saffron, poppies the color of amber.

The greatest events of life often leave one unmoved; they pass out of consciousness, and, when one thinks of them, become unreal. Even the scarlet flowers of passion seem to grow out in the same meadow as the poppies of oblivion. We reject the burden of their memory, and have anodynes against them. But the little things, the things of no moment, remain with us.

When I asked some old Roman philosopher or other how he wanted to die, he said he would open his veins in a warm bath. I thought it would be easy, lying in the tub and seeing the redness flower from my wrists, flush after flush through the clear water, till I sank to sleep under a surface gaudy as poppies. But when it came right down to it, the skin of my wrists looked so white and defenseless that I couldn’t do it. It was as if what I wanted to kill wasn’t in that skin or the thin blue pulse that jumped under my thumb, but somewhere else, deeper, more secret, and a whole lot harder to get at

The finest music in the room is that which streams out to the ear of the spirit in many an exquisite strain from the little shelf of books on the opposite wall. Every volume there is an instrument which some melodist of the mind created and set vibrating with music, as a flower shakes out its perfume or a star shakes out its light. Only listen, and they soothe all care, as though the silken-soft leaves of poppies had been made vocal and poured into the ear.

Joseph would reach out to me occasionally, the same way the desert blooms a flower every now and then. You get so used to the subtleties of beige and brown, and then a sunshine-yellow poppy bursts from the arm of a prickly pear. How I loved those flower moments, like when he pointed out the moon and Jupiter, but they were rare, and never to be expected.

God sure picks the finest flowers.

I dreamed I stood upon a little hill, And at my feet there lay a ground, that seemed Like a waste garden, flowering at its will With buds and blossoms. There were pools that dreamed Black and unruffled; there were white lilies A few, and crocuses, and violets Purple or pale, snake-like fritillaries Scarce seen for the rank grass, and through green nets Blue eyes of shy peryenche winked in the sun. And there were curious flowers, before unknown, Flowers that were stained with moonlight, or with shades Of Nature's willful moods; and here a one That had drunk in the transitory tone Of one brief moment in a sunset; blades Of grass that in an hundred springs had been Slowly but exquisitely nurtured by the stars, And watered with the scented dew long cupped In lilies, that for rays of sun had seen Only God's glory, for never a sunrise mars The luminous air of Heaven. Beyond, abrupt, A grey stone wall. o'ergrown with velvet moss Uprose; and gazing I stood long, all mazed To see a place so strange, so sweet, so fair. And as I stood and marvelled, lo! across The garden came a youth; one hand he raised To shield him from the sun, his wind-tossed hair Was twined with flowers, and in his hand he bore A purple bunch of bursting grapes, his eyes Were clear as crystal, naked all was he, White as the snow on pathless mountains frore, Red were his lips as red wine-spilith that dyes A marble floor, his brow chalcedony. And he came near me, with his lips uncurled And kind, and caught my hand and kissed my mouth, And gave me grapes to eat, and said, 'Sweet friend, Come I will show thee shadows of the world And images of life. See from the South Comes the pale pageant that hath never an end.' And lo! within the garden of my dream I saw two walking on a shining plain Of golden light. The one did joyous seem And fair and blooming, and a sweet refrain Came from his lips; he sang of pretty maids And joyous love of comely girl and boy, His eyes were bright, and 'mid the dancing blades Of golden grass his feet did trip for joy; And in his hand he held an ivory lute With strings of gold that were as maidens' hair, And sang with voice as tuneful as a flute, And round his neck three chains of roses were. But he that was his comrade walked aside; He was full sad and sweet, and his large eyes Were strange with wondrous brightness, staring wide With gazing; and he sighed with many sighs That moved me, and his cheeks were wan and white Like pallid lilies, and his lips were red Like poppies, and his hands he clenched tight, And yet again unclenched, and his head Was wreathed with moon-flowers pale as lips of death. A purple robe he wore, o'erwrought in gold With the device of a great snake, whose breath Was fiery flame: which when I did behold I fell a-weeping, and I cried, 'Sweet youth, Tell me why, sad and sighing, thou dost rove These pleasent realms? I pray thee speak me sooth What is thy name?' He said, 'My name is Love.' Then straight the first did turn himself to me And cried, 'He lieth, for his name is Shame, But I am Love, and I was wont to be Alone in this fair garden, till he came Unasked by night; I am true Love, I fill The hearts of boy and girl with mutual flame.' Then sighing, said the other, 'Have thy will, I am the love that dare not speak its name.

I thought it would be easy, lying in the tub and seeing the redness flower from my wrists, flush after flush through the clear water, till I sank to sleep under a surface gaudy as poppies

To Autumn" Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness, Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun; Conspiring with him how to load and bless With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run; To bend with apples the moss'd cottage-trees, And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core; To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells With a sweet kernel; to set budding more, And still more, later flowers for the bees, Until they think warm days will never cease, For summer has o'er-brimm'd their clammy cells. Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store? Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find Thee sitting careless on a granary floor, Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind; Or on a half-reap'd furrow sound asleep, Drows'd with the fume of poppies, while thy hook Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers: And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep Steady thy laden head across a brook; Or by a cyder-press, with patient look, Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours. Where are the songs of spring? Ay, Where are they? Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,— While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day, And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue; Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn Among the river sallows, borne aloft Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies; And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn; Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft; And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

The truth of the matter was, that whether a person did good or committed evil was rarely ever due to their inherent nature. Each person was like a plot of farmland; some were lucky, their fields sprinkled with seeds of grains, bearing an abundant harvest come autumn, paddies wafting with the soft fragrance of rice and fields of wheat dancing in the wind like waves, and everything would be good and praise-worthy. But some were not so lucky. Their fields were planted with the seeds of poppy flowers, and the spring breeze brought only the sin of intoxicated dissipation and euphoric decadence, filling the skies and covering the lands with that vile, bloody red and gold. The people abhorred it, cursed it, feared it, even as they indulged in its blissful stupor, rotted away in its filthy stench.

I’ve never seen anything more beautiful in all my life. Which is your favorite?” “That’s like asking me which is my favorite ball.” I blinked then, utterly outraged, twisted to glower at him. “You did not just compare The Concert, Poppy Flowers, and Landscape with Obelisk to your testicles.” His lips curved into a smirk. “I did. Because I can’t choose. How can I? It’s nothing to do with value, and everything to do with how it makes you feel.

At Livia's indecisive silence, Shaw abandoned the subject, and fastened his gaze on the tousled, heavily planted cottage garden ahead of them. Long banners of honeysuckle trailed over the garden fence, its fragrance making the air thick and sweet. Butterflies danced amid bright splotches of poppies and peonies. Beyond a plot of carrots, lettuce, and radishes, a rose-covered archway led to a tiny glasshouse that was shaded by a parasol-shaped sycamore.

My chest drummed, and at the top of a sweetgrass hill speckled with orange-gold California poppies, I danced like a little kid, adrenaline rushing. A sense of great possibility charmed me. A wicked white jolt, wonderful and wrong.

Then, all of a sudden, those pea-green lawns where the first scarlet poppies were flowering, those canary-yellow fields which striped the tawny hills sloping down to a sea full of azure glints, all seemed so trivial to me, so banal, so false, so much in contrast with Ayl's person, with Ayl's world, with Ayl's idea of beauty, that I realized her place could never have been out here. And I realized, with grief and fear, that I had remained out here, that I would never again be able to escape those gilded and silvered gleams, those little clouds that turned from pale blue to pink, those green leaves that yellowed every autumn, and that Ayl's perfect world was lost forever, so lost I couldn't even imagine it any more, and nothing was left that could remind me of it, even remotely, nothing except perhaps that cold wall of gray stone.

She saw for the first time the way we fill our homes with macabre altars to the live things we've murdered__ the floral print of the twin mattress in her childhood bedroom, stripped of its sheets when she soiled them; ferns on throw pillows coated in formaldehyde; poppies on petrochemical dinner plates; boxes and bags of bulk pulpstuffs emblazoned with plant imagery the way milk cartons are emblazoned with children. A rock on a window ledge, cut flowers stabbed in vases, a wreath of sprigs nailed to the front door-- every house a mausoleum, every house a wax museum.

Final Disposition Others divided closets full of mother's things. From the earth, I took her poppies. I wanted those fandango folds of red and black chiffon she doted on, loving the wild and Moorish music of them, coating her tongue with the thin skin of their crimson petals. Snapping her fingers, flamenco dancer, she'd mock the clack of castanets in answer to their gypsy cadence. She would crouch toward the flounce of flowers, twirl, stamp her foot, then kick it out as if to lift the ruffles, scarlet along the hemline of her yard. And so, I dug up, soil and all, the thistle-toothed and gray-green clumps of leaves, the testicle seedpods and hairy stems both out of season, to transplant them in my less-exotic garden. There, they bloom her blood's abandon, year after year, roots holding, their poppy heads nodding a carefree, opium-ecstatic, possibly forever sleep.

This was my thought as I followed her to the cemetery, pausing every few minutes as she and the children stopped to pick a handful of roadside flowers- weeds, for the most part- dandelions; ragwort; daisies; poppies; a stray anemone from the verge; a fistful of rosemary from someone's garden, pushing its shoots through a dry stone wall. Of course, Vianne Rocher likes weeds. And the children- the young one especially- lent themselves to the game with glee, so that by the time we reached the place, she had a whole armful of flowers and herbs tied together with bindweed and a straggle of wild strawberry-

Spring has come with little prelude, like turning a rocky corner into a valley, and gardens and borders have blossomed suddenly lush with daffodils, irises, tulips. Even the derelict houses of Les Marauds are touched with color, but here the ordered gardens have run to rampant eccentricity; a flowering elder growing from the balcony of a house overlooking the water, a roof carpeted with dandelions, violets poking out of a crumbling facade. Once-cultivated plants have reverted to their wild state, small leggy geraniums thrusting between hemlock-umbels, self-seeded poppies scattered at random and bastardized from their original red to orange to palest mauve. A few days' sunshine is enough to coax them from sleep; after the rain they stretch and raise their heads toward the light. Pull out a handful of these supposed weeds, and there are sages and irises, pinks and lavenders, under the docks and ragwort.

One of the remarkable things about Life After Life is the way that this formal experimentation is combined with a consistently involving plot. It is as if the writing of B. S. Johnson had been crossed with the better novels of Anthony Trollope. An entire world emerges but shows itself again and again in different lights. It’s an unusual book in many ways: in part a tribute to England and to the resilience of the English character revealed under the stress of wartime; in part a book about love that doesn’t contain a love story but instead celebrates the bond between siblings. It’s a book full of horror vividly described, as in the repeated image of a dress with human arms still inside it, seen in a bombed building. Yet the most memorable passages are those which describe the prewar English countryside before suburbia encroached upon “the flowers that grew in the meadow beyond the copse—flax and larkspur, buttercups, corn poppies, red campion and oxeye daisies.” Above all, it’s a book about the act of reading itself. As you read it, it asks you to think about your expectations of plot and outcome. The reader desires happiness for certain characters, and Atkinson both challenges and rewards that tendency.

And, unlike me as it was, I sent a prayer that she would make it that long. Poppy had to see the trees in their full flower. She simply had to hold on that long. “I will,” Poppy suddenly whispered. I met her eyes and she squeezed my hand like she was hearing my silent plea. “I’ll see them. I’m determined.

When they asked some old Roman philosopher or other how he wanted to die, he said he would open his veins in a warm bath. I thought it would be easy, lying in the tub and seeing the redness flower from my wrists, flush after flush through the clear water, till I sank to sleep under a surface gaudy as poppies.

Mamaw also said that the best things in life die quickly, like the cherry blossom. Because something so beautiful can never last forever, shouldn’t last forever. It stays for a brief moment in time to remind us how precious life is, before fading away just as quickly as it came. She said that it teaches you more in its short life than anything that is forever by your side.” My throat began to close at the pain in her voice. She looked up at me. “Because nothing so perfect can last an eternity, can it? Like shooting stars. We see the usual stars above us every single night. Most people take them for granted, even forget they are there. But if a person sees a shooting star, they remember that moment forever, they even make a wish at its presence.” She took in a deep breath. “It shoots by so quickly that people savor the short time they have with it.” I felt a teardrop fall on our joined hands. I was confused, unsure why she was talking about such sad things. “Because something so completely perfect and special is destined to fade. Eventually, it has to blow away into the wind.” Poppy held up the cherry blossom that was still in her hand. “Like this flower.” She threw it into the air, just as a gust of wind came. The strong bluster carried the petals into the sky and away above the trees. It disappeared from our sight. “Poppy—” I went to speak, but she cut me off. “Maybe we’re like the cherry blossom, Rune. Like shooting stars. Maybe we loved too much too young and burned so bright that we had to fade out.” She pointed behind us, to the blossom grove. “Extreme beauty, quick death. We had this love long enough to teach us a lesson. To show us how capable of love we truly are.

An acre of poppies and a forest of spruce boggle no one’s mind. Even ten square miles of wheat gladdens the hearts of most . . . No, in the plant world, and especially among the flowering plants, fecundity is not an assault on human values. Plants are not our competitors; they are our prey and our nesting materials. We are no more distressed at their proliferation than an owl is at a population explosion among field mice . . . but in the animal world things are different, and human feelings are different . . . Fecundity is anathema only in the animal. "Acres and acres of rats" has a suitably chilling ring to it that is decidedly lacking if I say, instead, "acres and acres of tulips".

What would you like for your own life, Kate, if you could choose?” “Anything?” “Of course anything.” “That’s really easy, Aunty Ivy.” “Go on then.” “A straw hat...with a bright scarlet ribbon tied around the top and a bow at the back. A tea-dress like girls used to wear, with big red poppies all over the fabric. A pair of flat, white pumps, comfortable but really pretty. A bicycle with a basket on the front. In the basket is a loaf of fresh bread, cheese, fruit oh...and a bottle of sparkly wine, you know, like posh people drink. “I’m cycling down a lane. There are no lorries or cars or bicycles. No people – just me. The sun is shining through the trees, making patterns on the ground. At the end of the lane is a gate, sort of hidden between the bushes and trees. I stop at the gate, get off the bike and wheel it into the garden. “In the garden there are flowers of all kinds, especially roses. They’re my favourite. I walk down the little path to a cottage. It’s not big, just big enough. The front door needs painting and has a little stained glass window at the top. I take the food out of the basket and go through the door. “Inside, everything is clean, pretty and bright. There are vases of flowers on every surface and it smells sweet, like lemon cake. At the end of the room are French windows. They need painting too, but it doesn’t matter. I go through the French windows into a beautiful garden. Even more flowers there...and a veranda. On the veranda is an old rocking chair with patchwork cushions and next to it a little table that has an oriental tablecloth with gold tassels. I put the food on the table and pour the wine into a glass. I’d sit in the rocking chair and close my eyes and think to myself... this is my place.” From A DISH OF STONES

Social media is the supreme triumph of the commonplace, the undiluted voice of the commonplace, the perfect means of viral transmission of the commonplace. All excellence is tracked down and exterminated. The commonplace infects everything. It grows like weeds everywhere and strangles all beautiful, exceptional flowers. All tall poppies are all cut down.

But the flower was not satisfied to complete the preparations for her beauty in the shelter of her green chamber. She chose her colours with the greatest care. She dressed herself slowly. She adjusted her petals one by one. She did not wish to go out into the world all rumpled, like the field poppies. It was only in the full radiance of her beauty that she wished to appear.

On the wide level acres of the valley the topsoil lay deep and fertile. It required only a rich winter of rain to make it break forth in grass and flowers. The spring flowers in a wet year were unbelievable. The whole valley floor, and the foothills too, would be carpeted with lupins and poppies. Once a woman told me that colored flowers would seem more bright if you added a few white flowers to give the colors definition. Every petal of blue lupin is edged with white, so that a field of lupins is more blue than you can imagine. And mixed with these were splashes of California poppies. These too are of a burning color—not orange, not gold, but if pure gold were liquid and could raise a cream, that golden cream might be like the color of the poppies.

There was something wonderful about the atmosphere at Stony Cross Park. One could easily imagine it as some magical place set in some far-off land. The surrounding forest was so deep and thick as to be primeval in appearance, while the twelve-acre garden behind the manor seemed too perfect to be real. There were groves, glades, ponds, and fountains. It was a garden of many moods, alternating tranquility with colorful tumult. A disciplined garden, every blade of grass precisely clipped, the corners of the box hedges trimmed to knife blade crispness. Hatless, gloveless, and infused with a sudden sense of optimism, Annabelle breathed deeply of the country air. She skirted the edge of the terraced gardens at the back of the manor and followed a graveled path set between raised beds of poppies and geraniums. The atmosphere soon became thick with the perfume of flowers, as the path paralleled a drystone wall covered with tumbles of pink and cream roses. Wandering more slowly, Annabelle crossed through an orchard of ancient pear trees, sculpted by decades into fantastic shapes. Farther off, a canopy of silver birch led to woodland beds that appeared to melt seamlessly into the forest beyond.

Beneath and around the dead and ruined chaparral rise the most amazingly beautiful flowers. Tulips and wind poppies and flame poppies, whispering bells and suncups. These are flowers that grow only after a burn. Only in a land once dead. You never see them otherwise When my eyes closed I can see those flowers now. They are a promise: that the land will regrow, that even after a disaster life continues, that wonders abound. k

We fools dance thro' the cornfield of this life, Pluck ears to left and right and swallow raw, —Nay, tread, at pleasure, a sheaf underfoot, To get the better at some poppy-flower,— Well aware we shall have so much less wheat In the eventual harvest: you meantime Waste not a spike,—the richlier will you reap! What then? There will be always garnered meal Sufficient for our comfortable loaf, While you enjoy the undiminished sack!

THE MEETING" "Scant rain had fallen and the summer sun Had scorched with waves of heat the ripening corn, That August nightfall, as I crossed the down Work-weary, half in dream. Beside a fence Skirting a penning’s edge, an old man waited Motionless in the mist, with downcast head And clothing weather-worn. I asked his name And why he lingered at so lonely a place. “I was a shepherd here. Two hundred seasons I roamed these windswept downlands with my flock. No fences barred our progress and we’d travel Wherever the bite grew deep. In summer drought I’d climb from flower-banked combe to barrow’d hill-top To find a missing straggler or set snares By wood or turmon-patch. In gales of March I’d crouch nightlong tending my suckling lambs. “I was a ploughman, too. Year upon year I trudged half-doubled, hands clenched to my shafts, Guiding my turning furrow. Overhead, Cloud-patterns built and faded, many a song Of lark and pewit melodied my toil. I durst not pause to heed them, rising at dawn To groom and dress my team: by daylight’s end My boots hung heavy, clodded with chalk and flint. “And then I was a carter. With my skill I built the reeded dew-pond, sliced out hay From the dense-matted rick. At harvest time, My wain piled high with sheaves, I urged the horses Back to the master’s barn with shouts and curses Before the scurrying storm. Through sunlit days On this same slope where you now stand, my friend, I stood till dusk scything the poppied fields. “My cob-built home has crumbled. Hereabouts Few folk remember me: and though you stare Till time’s conclusion you’ll not glimpse me striding The broad, bare down with flock or toiling team. Yet in this landscape still my spirit lingers: Down the long bottom where the tractors rumble, On the steep hanging where wild grasses murmur, In the sparse covert where the dog-fox patters.” My comrade turned aside. From the damp sward Drifted a scent of melilot and thyme; From far across the down a barn owl shouted, Circling the silence of that summer evening: But in an instant, as I stepped towards him Striving to view his face, his contour altered. Before me, in the vaporous gloaming, stood Nothing of flesh, only a post of wood.

The Garden by Moonlight" A black cat among roses, Phlox, lilac-misted under a first-quarter moon, The sweet smells of heliotrope and night-scented stock. The garden is very still, It is dazed with moonlight, Contented with perfume, Dreaming the opium dreams of its folded poppies. Firefly lights open and vanish High as the tip buds of the golden glow Low as the sweet alyssum flowers at my feet. Moon-shimmer on leaves and trellises, Moon-spikes shafting through the snow ball bush. Only the little faces of the ladies’ delight are alert and staring, Only the cat, padding between the roses, Shakes a branch and breaks the chequered pattern As water is broken by the falling of a leaf. Then you come, And you are quiet like the garden, And white like the alyssum flowers, And beautiful as the silent sparks of the fireflies. Ah, Beloved, do you see those orange lilies? They knew my mother, But who belonging to me will they know When I am gone.

The Garden of Proserpine" Here, where the world is quiet; Here, where all trouble seems Dead winds' and spent waves' riot In doubtful dreams of dreams; I watch the green field growing For reaping folk and sowing, For harvest-time and mowing, A sleepy world of streams. I am tired of tears and laughter, And men that laugh and weep; Of what may come hereafter For men that sow to reap: I am weary of days and hours, Blown buds of barren flowers, Desires and dreams and powers And everything but sleep. Here life has death for neighbour, And far from eye or ear Wan waves and wet winds labour, Weak ships and spirits steer; They drive adrift, and whither They wot not who make thither; But no such winds blow hither, And no such things grow here. No growth of moor or coppice, No heather-flower or vine, But bloomless buds of poppies, Green grapes of Proserpine, Pale beds of blowing rushes Where no leaf blooms or blushes Save this whereout she crushes For dead men deadly wine. Pale, without name or number, In fruitless fields of corn, They bow themselves and slumber All night till light is born; And like a soul belated, In hell and heaven unmated, By cloud and mist abated Comes out of darkness morn. Though one were strong as seven, He too with death shall dwell, Nor wake with wings in heaven, Nor weep for pains in hell; Though one were fair as roses, His beauty clouds and closes; And well though love reposes, In the end it is not well. Pale, beyond porch and portal, Crowned with calm leaves, she stands Who gathers all things mortal With cold immortal hands; Her languid lips are sweeter Than love's who fears to greet her To men that mix and meet her From many times and lands. She waits for each and other, She waits for all men born; Forgets the earth her mother, The life of fruits and corn; And spring and seed and swallow Take wing for her and follow Where summer song rings hollow And flowers are put to scorn. There go the loves that wither, The old loves with wearier wings; And all dead years draw thither, And all disastrous things; Dead dreams of days forsaken, Blind buds that snows have shaken, Wild leaves that winds have taken, Red strays of ruined springs. We are not sure of sorrow, And joy was never sure; To-day will die to-morrow; Time stoops to no man's lure; And love, grown faint and fretful, With lips but half regretful Sighs, and with eyes forgetful Weeps that no loves endure. From too much love of living, From hope and fear set free, We thank with brief thanksgiving Whatever gods may be That no life lives for ever; That dead men rise up never; That even the weariest river Winds somewhere safe to sea. Then star nor sun shall waken, Nor any change of light: Nor sound of waters shaken, Nor any sound or sight: Nor wintry leaves nor vernal, Nor days nor things diurnal; Only the sleep eternal In an eternal night.

The small pergola that Michael had built was covered in loops of jasmine, and Lara's flower beds were blazing with color. Blowsy white peonies, dusky purple irises with golden stripes, pale orange poppies with sooty centers. The first tea roses of the year were budding. Elinas, pink petals tipped with crimson, and the ivory Jeanne Moreaus that smelled faintly of lemons. Lara wanted to pick one and put it on the breakfast tray, but Michael hated cut flowers. She went back inside and began to set the tray. Her mother's blue Venetian glass dish filled with raspberries. Orange juice in a white jug. A honey pot with a wooden dipper. Sunshine streamed in through the window, warming the terra-cotta tiles beneath her bare feet. She could not have cut flowers in the house so she had pictures of them instead. Two huge framed Georgia O'Keefe poppy prints. An apron with a pattern of climbing roses. A wooden clock that Phil had given her with a pendulum in the shape of a red rose.

There is a monstrous garden in the sky Nightly they sow it fresh. Nightly it springs, Luridly splendid, towards the moon on high. Red-poppy flares, and fire-bombs rosy-bright Shell-bursts like hellborn sunflowers, gold and white Lilies, long-stemmed, that search the heavens' height... They tend it well, these gardeners on wings! How rich these blossoms, hideously fair Sprawling above the shuddering citadel As though ablaze with laughter! Lord, how long Must we behold them flower, ruthless, strong Soaring like weeds the stricken worlds among Triumphant, gay, these dreadful blooms of hell? O give us back the garden that we knew Silent and cool, where silver daisies lie, The lovely stars! O garden purple-blue Where Mary trailed her skirts amidst the dew Of ageless planets, hand-in-hand with You And Sleep and Peace walked with Eternity..... But here I sit, and watch the night roll by. There is a monstrous garden in the sky! (written during an air raid, London, midnight, October 1941)

We’ll make a wellness altar, I think … have some incense burn¬ing, fresh flowers every day and string some lights around it …’ Poppy rolled her head to the side. ‘Still think it’s a good idea?’ Julia blanched at the tackiness of a wellness altar with fairy lights and a water feature, but what the hell, she already had a three-metre girly snake ruining the ambience. ‘Sure,’ she said. If it made Scarlett happy. Poppy laughed. ‘I’m going to remind you of this conversation when your apartment looks like a Chinese brothel.

Camelot—Camelot," said I to myself.  "I don't seem to remember hearing of it before.  Name of the asylum, likely." It was a soft, reposeful summer landscape, as lovely as a dream, and as lonesome as Sunday.  The air was full of the smell of flowers, and the buzzing of insects, and the twittering of birds, and there were no people, no wagons, there was no stir of life, nothing going on.  The road was mainly a winding path with hoof-prints in it, and now and then a faint trace of wheels on either side in the grass—wheels that apparently had a tire as broad as one's hand. Presently a fair slip of a girl, about ten years old, with a cataract of golden hair streaming down over her shoulders, came along. Around her head she wore a hoop of flame-red poppies. It was as sweet an outfit as ever I saw, what there was of it.  She walked indolently along, with a mind at rest, its peace reflected in her innocent face.  The circus man paid no attention to her; didn't even seem to see her.  And she—she was no more startled at his fantastic make-up than if she was used to his like every day of her life.  She was going by as indifferently as she might have gone by a couple of cows; but when she happened to notice me, then there was a change!  Up went her hands, and she was turned to stone;

Autumn eats its leaf out of my hand: we are friends. From the nuts we shell time and we teach it to walk: then time returns to the shell. In the mirror it’s Sunday, September 17, 2017 in dream there is room for sleeping, our mouths speak the truth. My eye moves down to the sex of my loved one: we look at each other, we exchange dark words, we love each other like poppy and recollection, we sleep like wine in the conches, like the sea in the moon’s blood ray. We stand by the window embracing, and people look up from the street: it is time they knew! It is time the stone made an effort to flower, time unrest had a beating heart. It is time it were time. It is time. ("Corona")

This long letter is because I'm writing before breakfast. Oh, the beautiful vine leaves! The house is covered with a vine. I looked out earlier, and Mrs. Wilcox was already in the garden. No wonder she sometimes looks tired. She was watching the large red poppies come out. Then she walked off the lawn to the meadow, whose corner to the right I can just see. Trail, trail, went her long dress over the sopping grass, and she came back with her hands full of the hay that was cut yesterday - I suppose for rabbits or something, as she kept on smelling it. The air here is delicious. Later on I heard the noise of croquet balls, and looked out again, and it was Charles Wilcox practising; they are keen on all games. Presently he started sneezing and had to stop. Then I hear more clicketing, and it is Mr. Wilcox practising, and then, "a-tissue, a-tissue": he has to stop too. Then Evie comes out, and does some calisthenic exercises on a machine that is tacked to a greengage-tree - they put everything to use - and then she says "a-tissue," and in she goes. And finally Mrs. Wilcox reappears, trail, trail, still smelling hay and looking at the flowers. I inflict all this on you because once you said that life is sometimes life and sometimes only a drama, and one must learn to distinguish t'other from which, and up to now I have always put that down as "Meg's clever nonsense.

I want to die young, neither loving nor grieving for anyone; to burst like a golden falling star, to shed my petals while still an unfaded flower. I want those wearied by hostility to find bliss twofold at my gravestone. I want to die young. Bury me to the side, away from the irritating and noisy road, there, where the pussy willow inclines to the waves, where the overgrown bushes grow yellow. So that the dreamy poppies may grow, so that the wind may breathe the fragrances of the distant earth over me. I want to die young. I don't look at the path I've travelled, at the madness of wasted years. I can doze untroubled, once I've sung my final hymn. Let the fire not completely fade; let there remain a memory of what aroused the heart's thirst for life. I want to die young.

Through Poppy’s eyes, she learned to see the treasures that the mountains held for those who lowered their eyes and let them linger on the ground: neat little mats of wild thyme encrusted on sun-baked rocks and stones covered with pin cushions of yellow saxifrage bobbing up and down between the sparkling ripples of the mountain streams. Lucy had passed waterfalls where tall, pink adenostyles stood proudly at the edge to be showered and splashed, and frothy clumps of white saxifrage cascaded from crannies in the shining, rocky sides into the tumbling waters below. She had wandered across hillsides where wild cumin blew on the breeze, ambled under the cool shadows of the pinewoods punctuated by bright, dainty astrantia and plodged through mountain bogs amongst the fluffy white drumsticks of cotton grass. 

A moth is such a simple machine in the animal world - the go-kart to the modern car - and it takes a lot of glitches to prevent it going. It's this intriguing simplicity, the idea that you could pull it into its constituent parts and put it back together in the same rainy day, that if you pulled back the skin, you could watch the inner workings, that makes a moth such an absorbing creature to study. Moths have a universal character: there are no individuals. Each reacts to a precise condition or stimulus in a predictable and replicable way. They are pre-programmed robots, unable to learn from experience. For instance, we know they will allways react to a smell, a pheromone or a particular spectrum of light in the same way. I can mimic the scent of a flower so that a moth will direct itself towards that scent ...

Red Red is the wine, red are the carnations. Red is beautiful. Red flowers and red. Color itself is beautiful. The red color is red. Red is the flag, red the poppy. Red are the lips and the mouth. Red are the reality and the Fall. Red are many Blue Leaves. Yellow Yellow is the sand of the earth. Yellow is the color of the bronze forests. Yellow is the hearts of flowers. Yellow are the asters. Yellow is the meadow. of money. the franc is yellow.–brunette. i have seen a yellow franc. yellow is for example my pencil. Violet The color was rose-red then blue came along and cried viola viola violeta. violet was lovely but only in the sky. quite simply this color was lovely you violet. The cry of violet colors. Blue The Red Color. The Yellow Color. The Dark Green. The Sky ELLENO The Patentender The Pedestal, The Ship. The Rainbow. The Sea The Shoreleaves The Water The Leaf Vein The Kleyf (R) “r.” The Locks + The Lock.

As he went along the path he stopped to look at the plants. He paused by the kitchen plot to pick leaves from the aromatic herbs and rub them in his hands. He lingered among the flower beds, bending to smell or to touch the petals. When he got to the statue hidden by the yew bushes he laughed, then backed off to see it from a bit farther away. He shifted his head from side to side, then, imitating the figure, he lifted his hands to play an imaginary flute and raised one knee in a Bacchic dance. When Celia heard Dennis laughing near the statue she came to greet him and introduce himself. "Oh, you caught me dancing with this faun fellow! I am so glad to finally meet you," he said. "Your plume poppies are glorious," he said. "The whole garden is. I hope you will walk me through it when there's time." "Of course I will." Celia almost hugged him for his appreciation. "I'm glad you like the poppies. I can give you some if you like, but they are complete thugs. Hooligans! They escape wherever you put them, they multiply and take over. You really have to keep an eye on them.

Joe had always pretended indifference to flowers. He preferred fruit trees, herbs and vegetables, things to be picked and harvested, stored, dried, pickled, bottled, pulped, made into wine. But there were always flowers in his garden all thee same. Planted as if on an afterthought: dahlias, poppies, lavender, hollyhocks. Roses twined among the tomatoes. Sweet peas among the bean poles. Part of it was camouflage, of course. Part of it a lure for bees. But the truth was that Joe liked flowers, and was reluctant even to pull weeds. Jay would not have seen the rose garden if he had not known where to look. The wall against which the roses had once been trained had been partly knocked down, leaving an irregular section of brick about fifteen feet long. Greenery had shot up it, almost reaching the top, creating a dense thicket in which he hardly recognized the roses themselves. With the shears he clipped a few briars free and revealed a single large red rose almost touching the ground. "Old rose," remarked Joe, peering closer. "Best kind for cookin'. You should try makin' some rose petal jam. Champion." Jay wielded the shears again, pulling the tendrils away from the bush. He could see more rosebuds now, tight and green away from the sun. The scent from the open flower was light and earthy.

The only point that everyone I spoke with in Rome agrees upon is that Armando al Pantheon is one of the city's last true trattorie. Given the location, Claudio and his family could have gone the way of the rest of the neighborhood a long time ago and mailed it in with a handful of fresh mozzarella and prosciutto. But he's chosen the opposite path, an unwavering dedication to the details- the extra steps that make the oxtail more succulent, the pasta more perfectly toothsome, the artichokes and favas and squash blossoms more poetic in their expression of the Roman seasons. "I experiment in my own small ways. I want to make something new, but I also want my guests to think of their mothers and grandmothers. I want them to taste their infancy, to taste their memories. Like that great scene in Ratatouille." I didn't grow up on amatriciana and offal, but when I eat them here, they taste like a memory I never knew I had. I keep coming back. For the cacio e pepe, which sings that salty-spicy duet with unrivaled clarity, thanks to the depth charge of toasted Malaysian peppercorns Claudio employs. For his coda alla vaccinara, as Roman as the Colosseum, a masterpiece of quinto quarto cookery: the oxtail cooked to the point of collapse, bathed in a tomato sauce with a gentle green undertow of celery, one of Rome's unsung heroes. For the vegetables: one day a crostini of stewed favas and pork cheek, the next a tumble of bitter puntarelle greens bound in a bracing anchovy vinaigrette. And always the artichokes. If Roman artichokes are drugs, Claudio's are pure poppy, a vegetable so deeply addictive that I find myself thinking about it at the most inappropriate times. Whether fried into a crisp, juicy flower or braised into tender, melting submission, it makes you wonder what the rest of the world is doing with their thistles.

A gentleman shouldn't give personal items to a lady he's courting." He lowered his voice, mindful of being overheard by Poppy and the housekeeper, who were talking by the threshold of the Rutledge apartments. "But I can't take it back- no other woman could do it justice. And Marks, you have no idea of the self-restraint I exercised, I wanted to buy you a pair of embroidered stockings with little flowers running that run all the way up the insides of your-" "My lord," Catherine whispered, a light blush covering her face. "You forget yourself." "I haven't forgotten a thing, actually. Not one detail of your beautiful body. Soon I may start sketching you naked again. Every time I put a pencil to paper, the temptation nearly overwhelms me." She tried to look severe. "You promised not to do that again." "But my pencil has a will of its own," he said gravely.

She was distracted from her thoughts as he pulled something from one of his coat pockets, a flat rectangular leather case. "A present," Harry said, giving it to her. Her eyes rounded with surprise. "You didn't need to give me anything. Thank you. I didn't expect.. oh." This last as she opened the case and beheld a diamond necklace arranged on the velvet lining like a pool of glittering fire. It was a heavy garland of sparkling flowers and quatrefoil links. "Do you like it?" Harry asked casually. "Yes, of course, it's... breathtaking." Poppy had never imagined owning such jewelry. The only necklace she possessed was a single pearl on a chain. "Shall I... shall I wear it tonight?" "I think it would be appropriate with that gown." Harry took the necklace from the case, stood behind Poppy, and fastened it gently around her neck. The cold weight of the diamonds and the warm brush of his fingers at her nape elicited a shiver. He remained behind her, his hands settling lightly on the curves of her neck, moving in a warm stroke to the tops of her shoulders. "Lovely," he murmured. "Although nothing is as beautiful as your bare skin.

She saw for the first time the way we fill our homes with macabre altars to the live things we’ve murdered—the floral print of the twin mattress in her childhood bedroom, stripped of its sheets when she soiled them; ferns on throw pillows coated in formaldehyde; poppies on petrochemical dinner plates; boxes and bags of bulk pulpstuffs emblazoned with plant imagery the way milk cartons are emblazoned with children. A rock on a window ledge, cut flowers stabbed in a vase, wreath of sprigs nailed to the front door—every house a mausoleum, every house a wax museum.

One day we strolled down the Philosopher's Path, which proved as enchanting as I had hoped in the fragrant pink bloom of spring. Since ancient times, the Japanese have heralded the arrival of the cherry blossoms because they symbolize the ephemeral beauty of life. But it isn't just the three or four days of open flowers that stirs the senses. It is their arrival and departure. Looking at a bud about to burst open offers the pleasurable anticipation of rebirth, while the soft scattering of petals on the ground is often considered the most beautiful stage of all because it represents the death of the flowers. Another day I took John to one of my tea kaiseki classes to watch the making of a traditional picnic to celebrate the arrival of the cherry blossoms. While he sat on a stool near my cooking station, Stephen and I cooked rice in water flavored with kelp, sake, and light soy, then packed it into a wooden mold shaped like a chrysanthemum. After tapping out the compact white flower, we decorated it with two salted cherry blossoms. We wrapped chunks of salted Spanish mackerel in brined cherry leaves and steamed the packets until the fatty fish turned milky in parts. We also made cold seafood salad, pea custard, and chewy millet dumplings, which we grilled over a charcoal burner until brown and sticky enough to hold a coating of ivory Japanese poppy seeds.

Why aren’t you betrothed to anyone?” he asked with startling directness. “You’ve been out in society for two, three years?” “Three,” Poppy said, feeling more than a little defensive. “Your family is one of means—one would assume you have a generous dowry on the table. Your brother is a viscount—another advantage. Why haven’t you married?” “Do you always ask such personal questions of people you’ve just met?” Poppy asked in amazement. “Not always. But I find you . . . interesting.” She considered the question he had put to her, and shrugged. “I wouldn’t want any of the gentlemen I’ve met during the past three years. None of them are remotely appealing.” “What kind of man appeals to you?” “Someone with whom I could share a quiet, ordinary life.” “Most young women dream of excitement and romance.” She smiled wryly. “I suppose I have a great appreciation for the mundane.” “Has it occurred to you that London is the wrong place to seek a quiet, ordinary life?” “Of course. But I’m not in a position to look in the right places.” She should have stopped there. There was no need to explain more. But it was one of Poppy’s failings that she loved conversation, and like Dodger facing a drawer full of garters, she couldn’t resist indulging. “The problem began when my brother, Lord Ramsay, inherited the title.” The stranger’s brows lifted. “That was a problem?” “Oh, yes,” Poppy said earnestly. “You see, none of the Hathaways were prepared for it. We were distant cousins of the previous Lord Ramsay. The title only came to Leo because of a series of untimely deaths. The Hathaways had no knowledge of etiquette—we knew nothing of the ways of the upper classes. We were happy in Primrose Place.” She paused to sort through the comforting memories of her childhood: the cheerful cottage with its thatched roof, the flower garden where her father had tended his prized Apothecary’s Roses, the pair of lop-eared Belgian rabbits who had lived in a hutch near the back doorstep, the piles of books in every corner. Now the abandoned cottage was in ruins and the garden lay fallow. “But there’s never any going back, is there,” she said rather than asked.

Harry glanced down at the oversized pastry with a crooked grin. “Which end do I start with?” “I have no idea,” she replied. “The only way to find out is to take a bite.” His hands went to her waist, and he turned her gently to face him. “I think I’ll start with you.” As his mouth lowered to hers, she yielded easily, her lips parting. He drew in the taste of her, delighting in her response. The casual kiss deepened, altered into something patient and deeply hungering . . . heat opening into more heat, a kiss with the layered merosity of exotic flowers. Eventually Harry lifted his mouth, his hands coming to her face as if he were cupping water to drink. He had a unique way of touching, she thought dazedly, his fingers gentle and artful, sensitive to nuance. “Your lips are swollen,” he whispered, the tip of his thumb brushing the corner of her mouth. Poppy pressed her cheek against one of his palms. “We’ve had many kisses to make up for.” “More than kisses,” he said, and the look in those vivid eyes brought a heartbeat into her throat. “As a matter of fact—” “Eat, or you’ll starve,” she said, trying to push him into a chair. He was so much larger, so solid, that the idea of compelling him to do anything was laughable.

The Swan Oh, a swan! Blooming in grace and power. Were you thrown out of the forest of reeds by Pan To flourish as a white rose-flower? Do not doubt: Over the tired waves An unearthly light shines out; He hides his bright plumage. The face of the flood-tide Grows clearer and clearer to see. Poppy-milk ripples, runs wide, Where the wings rested momentarily. Image of woman, He sings the deepest of deaths; Out of the glass-cold dew The sweet silence drips from his breath. Cup of down, Defenceless, utterly abandoning, He has forgotten the sound And the dreams by evening. Floating, drifting, Changed into golden grey, The swan is singing A song whose end is sadness and decay.

The docile doves have been mocked enough, by the darting drones that are built to snuff; and the olive branches have been dripping red, ever since we put our faith, in capsules of lead. At a time, when we need open libraries, the governments are plotting robotic militaries. and for how long should our nations linger in fear, from the day-to-day threats of dropping nuclear. Every time we wear our remembrance poppies, remember, that our heroes died hoping for peace; and lest we rise above the hemlocks of war, the flowers of mercy, will remain covered in gore. Violence has a domino effect, only triggers more hate, won't stop unless we make an effort to communicate; and since the future is indeed today's derivative, it's high time that we changed, this dystopian narrative.

I dream and drift, a double self, me and that woman … A great weariness becomes a black fire that consumes me … A great, passive yearning becomes the false life embracing me … Such a dull happiness! Being eternally at a point where two paths fork! I dream and behind me someone else is dreaming with me … Perhaps I am only the dream of that nonexistent Someone … Outside, the ever-distant dawn! The forest so intensely present to those other eyes of mine! When I’m far from that landscape, I almost forget it, and only when I have it here before me do I miss it, and only when I walk through it do I weep and long for it … The trees, the flowers, the secret, tree-thick paths! We would sometimes walk together, arm in arm, beneath the cedars and the Judas trees, and neither of us even gave a thought to living. Our flesh was a vague perfume and our life the echo of a bubbling spring. We would hold hands, and our eyes would wonder what it would be like to be a sensual being and to want to make flesh the illusion of love … In our garden there were flowers of every beautiful kind — roses with curled petals, white lilies tinged with yellow, poppies that would have been hidden had their red blush not betrayed their presence, a few violets on the crowded edges of the flower beds, tiny forget-me-nots, camellias barren of scent … And, erect above the tall grasses, the wide eyes of lone sunflowers would watch us.

And in the attic, if she had managed to find her way up the steep and crumbling steps, she would have found the one room left open to the light, she would have stood, breathless, picking cobwebs from her fingers and her face, staring at a whole meadow of wildflowers and grasses, poppies and oxeyes and flowering coriander, all flourishing in bird droppings and all lunging pointedly towards the one square foot of available sky.

It seems Poppy was right about the mosh pit, after all. And there she is, right in the middle of it. The flowers bounce along the grasping hands to tumble to the dance floor, where the women scramble for it like football players going after a greased fumble. Caylee hikes up her dress and scoots back from the incoming wave of women with a shout encouraging them to ‘get it!’ It’s a heap of tulle, lace, and pretty dresses, but Poppy squirms over and around them, dodging and weaving before popping up with the slightly crushed flowers in her hands. “Boo-yah!” She holds it up high in triumph, and the other women laugh, instantly realizing that they were going ham over a dozen roses they could buy at the grocery store.

She grew not on the land so much as out of it, like cottonwoods and bear grass. Each fall a part of her collapsed and withered alongside the wildflowers and grapevines she loved and used for healing. Each spring some new part of her erupted just as the mallows and poppies did, spreading her toes like roots in the truth and sustenance of ground, while branching out to the rest of the living world and stretching upwards towards the light.

My friend.. Do you remember when they told us that every flower has a meaning and every color has its significance? They say.. There is a red flower in a faraway land that symbolizes deep sadness. My friend.. Which flower can scream with longing and cry with yearning and take revenge for the broken laughs? Maybe those poppy flowers do that? Maybe we can hide inside of them like fetuses sleeping peacefully? My friend.. I have never held those poppy flowers before.. I don't know how they feel or smell but.. It seems that those poppy flowers dig into memories and summon tears.. - letters in wartime

CONTIMENT’S END At the equinox when the earth was veiled in a late rain, wreathed with wet poppies, waiting spring, The ocean swelled for a far storm and beat its boundary, the ground-swell shook the beds of granite. I gazing at the boundaries of granite and spray, the established sea-marks, felt behind me Mountain and plain, the immense breadth of the continent, before me the mass and doubled stretch of water. I said: You yoke the Aleutian seal-rocks with the lava and coral sowings that flower the south, Over your flood the life that sought the sunrise faces ours that has followed the evening star. The long migrations meet across you and it is nothing to you, you have forgotten us, mother. You were much younger when we crawled out of the womb and lay in the sun’s eye on the tideline. It was long and long ago; we have grown proud since then and you have grown bitter; life retains Your mobile soft unquiet strength; and envies hardness, the insolent quietness of stone. The tides are in our veins, we still mirror the stars, life is your child, but there is in me Older and harder than life and more impartial, the eye that watched before there was an ocean. That watched you fill your beds out of the condensation of thin vapor and watched you change them, That saw you soft and violent wear your boundaries down, eat rock, shift places with the continents. Mother, though my song’s measure is like your surf-beat’s ancient rhythm I never learned it of you. Before there was any water there were tides of fire, both our tones flow from the older fountain.

I look down at the picture in my hand. It’s home, the image slightly dog-eared after two years in various grab bags and holdalls. There’s the house, white walls covered in the blue flowers she loves, red poppies stretching away in the background. There’s my mother, small and fair, hair falling out of its bun as usual, glasses—one of her many eccentricities—perched on her nose.

2012 Continuation of My Message to Andy   …I do recall that Albert was also taken ill, but why weren’t you, Zac or Monsieur Dubois? Maybe the waiter only added LSD to the soft drinks and not to the beers you guys had.               I did enjoy our outing to the Dutch countryside with Dr. Fahrib and the gang. The tulips were in full bloom, and so were the poppies and wild flowers. It was a beautiful spring day, wasn’t it? These blossoms were indeed a sight to behold, not to mention the heated debate that went on between Dubois, Jabril and the gang. Those two were at each other’s throats, even though most of their pronouncements held similar universal truths. Their debate was amusing, yet they got themselves into a twist. You would have thought a fisticuff would occur if the sheik or Mario weren’t there to keep peace. I’m sure you, the gallant arbiter, would have stepped in to stop the contretemps, if we were there to witness it all.☺               Our entourage gained much insight into various religious beliefs. I’m sure we would have found it highly educational if …

The more I read, the more I felt my understanding of the universe slip away from me. Columbine symbolized both 'desertion' and 'folly'; poppy, 'imagination' and 'extravagance'. The almond blossom, listed as 'indiscretion' in Elizabeth's dictionary, appeared in others as 'hope' and occasionally 'thoughtlessness'. The definitions were not only different, they were often contradictory. Even common thistle- the staple of my communication- appeared as 'misanthropy' only when it wasn't defined as 'austerity'.

Month of the dead, month of returning, thinks Charis. She thinks of the grey weeds waving, under the poisonous, guiless water, at the bottom of the lake; of the grey fish with lumpy chemical growths on them, wafting like shadows; of the lamprey eels with their tiny rasping teeth and sucking mouths, undulating among the husks of wrecked cars, the empty bottles. She thinks of everything that has fallen in, or else been thrown. Treasures and bones. At the beginning of November the French decorate their family graves with chrysanthemums, the Mexicans with marigolds, making a golden path so the spirits can find their way. Whereas we go for poppies. The flower of sleep and forgetting. Petals of spilled blood.

One day, crocuses bloomed in Maria’s hair, then larkspurs, then poppies, each season bringing new flowers. People assumed she wove them into her hair daily, but she didn’t. She burned her shoes, her corsets, anything that restrained her, and would spend the rest of her life in trousers, untethered, and most important to her, autonomous, soul-single, a wonderous one-ly woman.

We have her in our hearts. And in our memories. In flower petals that float on the water. And in the sounds coming from rattling poppy heads. We'll be able to remember her.

I'm not some delicate poppy that you can pluck from the ground, quick to wilt away...A flower you can crush in your fist. I am the saffron that wraps its roots around your neck.

It’s from the oldest of our language. Toria had a few meanings. One meant garden. Another could be loosely translated into pretty flower.” He smiled then, but no dimple appeared, and I couldn’t help but think of what Sotoria had been doing when she died. She’d been picking flowers. “But a more exact translation is poppy.

The brute fact is that it was a flower that defeated the mightiest military power in human history: the opium poppy may be humble in appearance, but it is one of the most powerful Beings that humans have encountered in their time on earth. To be sure, tea, sugarcane, tobacco, rubber, cotton, Yersinia pestis, and many other plants and pathogens have played major roles in human history, some of them over several centuries. But today they are all much diminished in their influence, while the opium poppy is mightier than ever.

Theseus, slayer of the Minotaur (who also slew Eumolpus’ son Kerkyon, to become king of Eleusis and neighboring Athens), pacified Cerberus, Hell’s watchdog, with poppy-juice on his aborted raid to kidnap the spring-princess, Persephone, from her lover, Hades. Jason of Thessaly was an adept herbalist—the name translates as “healer”—well-acquainted with opium. He used it as a kind of Mickey Finn, sprinkling it on the eyes of the serpent guarding the Golden Fleece. And the fire which Prometheus stole from Zeus is described metaphorically by Aeschylus as both flower and drug. Prometheus concealed the “fire” in the customary manner of Greek herb-gatherers—in a hollow fennel stalk—and stole it from Zeus at a place called Mekone, which translates literally as poppy town.