No one noticed
The vine – for its flower,
powder-blue & paper-thin,
Waving to us all in the wind.
Only took an hour
For its tendrils to become
Such a nest, we had to pull off
Thick runners. We left the rest—
Thick runners. We left the rest—
Not that we were tired, just
Too late: the sun had turned dusty,
And dinners cool, on our plates.
*
So the vine is still creeping,
Unassuming (this, it's power).
And we hope that it won't kill
The Norfolk Pine it's
Netting now, beneath
A pretty flower.
This poem is interesting, because usually the idea a vine invading the space of another plant is a flower. In this case, the Morning Glory flower is invading the Norfolk Pine. This instance seems jarring because the flower is so delicate and thin that you don’t expect the flower to be choking the other pine. It was also interesting to hear about how the speaker and his or her friends tried to pull off the thicker vines of the flower but didn’t finish the job because it was late and they had to eat dinner. If the task was that important to them, they would ignore their dinners, and continue pulling off the vines. However, maybe because of the fact that the morning glory is a beautiful and elegant flower, the speaker does not find the true need to save a less prettier plant.
ReplyDeleteI think that this poem says a lot about social standards and the double standards about problems in the world. A parallel that came to my mind was that if there is a female figure that was being mistreated by a male, there would be a call for help much more easily and publically that if there was a male figure being mistreated by a female figure. I think that the poem is talking about how the double standards we as humans have set up for ourselves are the reason many problems in the world are getting covered by more flashier distractions.