Cultivating Humanity Poem by Kevin Patrick

Hold this through your eyes, a garden
Pageants of violets, lilies, and black eyed sues
Marigolds of gold, next to asters born bold
Tulips posed with textures, in rainbow hues
Together, arranged in a flamboyant opus
Cultivated to beguile as our sights medicine
Yet, nobody judges these floral arrangements
The way we condemn a man's melanin


We proudly walk-through flotillas of flora
Raining with colours of depthless variation
Never once questioning the obscene idea
That flowers work better in racial isolation
No man has ever denigrated a petal
Simply because its skin is not his own kin
But history is soiled in ashes of turmoil
Where skin has starred the part as hates Lynchpin



No man is xenophobic of xanthophyll's
Confining flowers because its flesh is yellow
Know one has burned a lawn of carotenes
Or sent chlorophyll into garbage patched Ghettos
We never harangue an Iris because she is blue
Repelled clematis to the back of a bus
Segregations obscene to gardens scenic sheen
But we'd crush a child without such a hush

Look hard at a garden, see how it works
Flowers sharing soil, water, and fresh nutrients
Surviving against the wild whims of nature
Nurtured together, not scene as DNA deviants
roots interlocking, spreading through the earth
Coexisting, and mixing without killing brethren
We could take these lessons and cultivate ourselves
A rich plot of humanity, made for earth, as heaven