day 24 - "still, the orchid blooms"

good evening, internet world

sorry I've kept you all waiting - it's been quite a while and rightly so - plans for my new business are going forward rather quickly and there hasn't been a lot of time for poetry let alone posting it online, but I told myself I would make an effort to post at least one this month and I'm sticking to it.

the poem for today is a recent work - i just finished it in the past few weeks and it started as a single phrase in my mind that sat around for a long, long time and eventually gestated into the poem you're reading today. a lot of it came from simply sitting on my porch, interestingly enough, just gazing at my orchids.

i have two of them - one is a phalaenopsis, and the other i'm not so sure - it was given to me as a gift. the one thing that I always thought was so beautiful about the plants, besides their obvious physical beauty, was that even though (as rainforest plants) they were thousands of miles away from their native lands and would never be properly pollinated to reproduce, still they had the nerve and audacity to bloom for their strange new world to see, in stark rejection of the impossibility looming all around.

it's that kind of beauty that produced the single phrase in my mind that grew into 'still, the orchid blooms' - well, that and my love for sufi mysticism, I suppose. :)

so take what you will and enjoy, and, if you happen to own an orchid yourself, perhaps you'll be able to see this spectacle for yourself - not with your eyes, but with your soul.


"still, the orchid blooms"


like a dervish from a foreign land
exotic seasons whirling round
your sufi-spinning Sama
draws all dancing eyes
upon you now
to see your
sublime tariqah glow
so bold and bright
in youth

you’d never stoop to beg a stare -
kashkul hanging at your stem -
yet every falling, tender breath
is counted; kisses to a leaf
your dresses pink
and red as lust
but you’ve long shed
such weak desire
and shorn this life
of want

no childish hopes of pollination
amongst such flowers growing wild
you’ve never formed a gesture once
suggesting you’ve held faith in us

you laugh
inside, intent to hide
and honor us with wisdom’s dew -
wordlessly, in gorgeous dance,
each vibrant, fresh, and flowering stride
invites the koan, provokes a thought
as paradoxes twirl on by

against all nature,
the purest truths
exist in those
who smile at dooms

so might we all receive thy dance
and know why, still, the orchid blooms



- Joshua Clarke