Flowering Plants by the Roadside

                   Flowering Plants by the Roadside 

Dr Abe V Rotor 

Just as I have almost forgotten the garden of my youth

after love had blossomed and warmed my whole being,

now as cold as stone sans the inscription of my name,

I wake up to a flowering weed shining in the sun dying. 

how beautiful is this thing unwanted and uncared for,

when all that is said to be beautiful is just but a dream: 

 Hanging Gardens of Babylon, and the biblical Paradise;

I dare not step on a flowering weed.  Oh, dream, dream!

   

False Bird of Paradise* across a barb wire,

      symbol of a lost Garden;

golden in the sun in some forgotten place, 

      and in the hearts of men.

*Heliconia psittacorum

 

A cluster of feathery flowers of Eucalyptus* and a bee;

nectar and pollen grains it gathers to feed her colony.

*Eucalyptus deglupta

Bangbangsit (Ilk) for obnoxious odor this Lantana camara is named;

repels the intruder, the sensitive, except the Papilio* the Creator gave. 

(*Swallowtail butterfly)

 Thorny Thistle shy yet menacing to its enemies,   

survival tool in the wasteland, little of other means.  

Note sulfur butterfly (Pieres raphae) pollinating the flowers

Lowly and short lived, yet in glorious red;

beauty a passing glance on Begonia's bed. 

Begonia obliqua

Dimorphism a phenomenon that is barely known;

yellow and red in union -  from it  a seed is born.

Mickey mouse tree - Ochna serrulata

  Buntot tigre - Sanzyviera zeylanica - what  name, 

blooms when the weather is cold with little rain.

 Purple flowers on the vine with trellis or none, 

beaming with pride and dying in the sun.

*Wild  batao - Dolichos lablab

Its flowers open pure white in the morning gradually
turning into pink towards the end of the day, 
courting oh's and ah's to the inquisitive and curious;
indeed a manifestation of God's mysterious way.
Balibago (Hibiscus tiliaceus Linn), Family Malvaceae. 

Water Hyacinth*, your flowers are shy, tender and coy,
rising from the bottom of the pond in giant buoy. 
*Eichhornia crassipes

Flourescent Plumbago, when the sky is dark the more I see you;
and in the night you borrow some passing light and the stars above.
Leadwort, Plumbago auriculata

Kakawate* flowers, they say you are mean,
Beautiful sans fragrance, falling off before 
you are pickrd for the vase or for lei, 
yet you serve the kitchen and the bee. ~
* Madre de Cacao - Gliricida sepium

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