Lilium Nepalense – Photo by Denis Barthel
Tuesday Poem – Flowering Room, by Saradha Koirala
Flowering Room
In the lounge your angles
were acute and wrong.
You bent too slowly
towards the slivers of light
you could steal early morning
if I left the curtains wide.
On the fridge you learnt
stretches and poses,
salutes to the sun
which rose and rose
unobstructed and sure
until early afternoon.
When the Venetian blind
crashed down one evening,
its slats and strings so tangled
and dinners upon dinners
layered sticky on its once-white,
I propped it in the laundry
and you offered up
a strange bright lily
from your warm-damp soil
and butterflying leaves.
Saradha Koirala Saradha Koirala is a Wellington-based poet and English teacher. This lovely poem comes from her collection Wit of the Staircase, published by Steele Roberts in 2009. The poem reminds me of a cactus I’ve had for decades, which has only flowered once – in a sunroom in Mt Vic. But it also makes me think of other types of blossoming – how anyone might flower in the right conditions.Click on the quill for more Tuesday poems.
Janis Freegard's Weblog 
It’s a warm, thoughtful, well-crafted poem. Saradha’s poetry is a poetry of observation. Lovely poem.
Harvey, I agree about the intense observation and also the poetry of the everyday, exemplified by the stanza:
‘When the Venetian blind
crashed down one evening,
its slats and strings so tangled
and dinners upon dinners
layered sticky on its once-white,
I propped it in the laundry’