< that damn yellow flower >

[rayheinrich]

I always look forward to you submissions in the fun section. I love the pictures you post and 9 x out of 10 times I enjoy reading your poems. (Perhaps i have been guilty of not posting my comments of encouragement enough - I do really enjoy reading your posts and always look out for them).

Don't worry about the comments, while appreciated (usually), they are never
required. Howsomeever: Reading them IS absolutely mandatory! By the way:
Off-topic comments, especially creative ones, ARE both loved and encouraged

Sadly however I did not get much from this one... .
I got a sense of a play on she loves me / she loves me not, from the flower there or not there, but I've struggled to place the oak tree / yard thing that is in there - it just feels like a filler. As such it is fine as I like the absent-minded musing feel it has, but then again it is irritating as it does not give me anything beyond this and in such a short poem I am wanting every word to count for something.
JMO will wait and see if I can see anything further to enlighten me from other people's views on this.
Thanks for the read and the picture. (Love pics of the little and overlooked things in life). AJ.

A writer friend of mine used to say: "If you need to explain, you need
to rewrite." That said, I'll natter on anyway:

I probably should have used something other than a flower. My intention
was not 'She loves me / she loves me not', but 'LOVED me / loves me not.
[I try, BTW, to write my poems gender-free so I can, without additional
labor-intensive editing, send them to anyone I happen to be desiring at
the moment. ]

'(The one to / the left of / the oak tree / in your yard)' was inserted
to emphasize the intensity of their relationship by showing they had shared
a space intimately enough to be used as a reference. Flowers growing on,
and trees situated near, are references to graves. A grave symbolizing that
the loss of this love has the finality of death.

The anger directed at the flower, as billy noted, is an emotion that has
been subconsciously transferred by the protagonist (induced by the
irrationality of love) from the person he loves to the flower. Probably
because he/she can't admit to anger at her/his former love. This transfer
is the reason it's a "Poetry for fun" post.

But really, while all this explication is fun, the poem isn't meant to
be that deep. It's just a long-winded 'you don't love me anymore'. So the
poem, in relation to the 5 word expression above, isn't that short as it
takes 37 words (as well as a picture) to convey the same damn thing.