Happy Sunday, and welcome to Day 19 of National/Global Poetry Writing Month.
Today’s challenge draws inspiration from Florilegium, where flowers are more than decorative—they are linguistic experiments, medicinal archives, and mythic symbols. I’ve chosen to focus on the Iris sibirica, a flower rooted in both myth and meaning.
The iris carries a lineage that stretches back to Iris, the divine messenger bridging heaven and earth. It symbolizes faith, hope, wisdom, valor, and trust—but also transition, guidance, and the quiet assurance that something waits beyond the veil.
What better flower, then, for a poet who often writes at the edge of memory and survival? ✍️
🌿 “Iris Between Worlds” 🌿
Five petals like an open hand—
not asking, only offering.
A bloom fluent in silence,
speaking in violet tongues
the dialect of thresholds.
Iris—named for the bridge of light,
that arc stitched between storm and stillness,
where gods send their softest messengers
to whisper: not yet lost, not yet.
Its roots remember medicine—
the old ways, crushed into tinctures,
bitterness brewed into healing,
a paradox of poison and cure
held in the same trembling stem.
They planted you on women’s graves,
purple as dusk’s last breath,
to guide their wandering souls upward—
as if grief needed a compass,
as if heaven required directions.
Faith is not loud here.
It grows in quiet clusters,
in the unseen work of roots
braiding themselves through dark soil,
learning the language of endurance.
Hope is a color—
not bright, but deep,
a blue that leans toward sorrow
yet refuses to drown in it,
choosing instead to bloom.
And wisdom?
It is knowing the flower will wither,
and still bending close
to memorize its shape—
to carry it, pressed, inside the body.
If you want to explore more voices answering today’s prompt. Step beyond this page and into the wider current of #NaPoWriMo—where each voice bends the world in its own way. You can find them here: https://napowrimo.net/
—Or view the list of social media hashtags below.
X: #NaPoWriMo