Feel The Petals Of The Black Orchid Poem by Sarah Mkhonza

Feel the softness from afar
And smell the unusual scent
For here comes the truth held
In the hands of a flower rare
Coming at you while you twist
And turn for you are at the
Mercy of your truth for it
Wants to add to your love
Of life for all for one day
It will save us all.

In the eyes of the world,
Orchids purple orchids yellow
And all colors of the rainbow.
And then steps in the phiri
Named for the woman who saw it.
Like the ruins of Great Zimbabwe.
It did not have the wings of the
Zim bird to fly into the face of
The worlds dollar the way the bird
Perched itself on a nation's paper
Money with birdlike majesty, but
Remained in the forest to be
Put into history by one Phiri who
Fought the war of liberation
And felt what freedom felt like.

The time for the flower with velvet
Petals black that history had not seen.
It takes a fighter to see
What history has left out
And tell when there is something
Missing in the mix of things.

This victory of the black orchid
To be seen by all who dare to know
For it sits in the pages of books
Telling the world that wrote things
On the fauna of the world precious
It can still rewrite history the way
Phiri has done as she gave the world
This flower with the double root.

*The orchid Virginia Phiri discovered in Zimbabwe
is called Polystachya Phirii