Cut a daisy, then place it in water and food coloring to produce flowers of a shade similar to the dye. –Instructions for Dyeing Flower Petals, Perennial Summer Daisy Seed Packet
I put nine pale daisies
in a clear glass vase,
add a few drops of blue
dye to the water.
Hours later,
green stemmed daisies with pale blue petals
sit in afternoon light on the windowsill.
The breeze sighs:
Don’t we all take up and hold
what is in the water?
I cannot live in the world
without saying that
how we speak to one
another matters.
I cannot live in the world
without asking for more
champions of kindness.
I cannot live in the world
and pretend it is
perennial summer–
that everything is fixed while
so many are floodstained by fear, are
clipped by the hot blade of rage.
