Poetry performed by Val Cole

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POEM;

Upon ox-eyed daisies, a curse seemed struck
every mid-summer, when I was a child.
One by one, their petals, girls would pluck
‘til no stem held white blossoms in the wild.

Thus-tortured flora, guilty of no crime,
would stoically endure their gruesome fate,
consoled that after ritual and rhyme,
their tossed, forgotten pods would germinate.

Those girls weren’t wicked witches – only self-
possessed by that amatory impulse
which births propensity to venial sin.
Yet I prayed, “might our continental shelf
be blessed with hardier daisies that expulse
their seeds when it is cold and girls stay in?”