Ripe the garden plants, bright the flowers they bear
For bees to frolic and play till in future fruits be bare.

But I look at the flowers and see the petals fall.
Have you seen it before? Beauty and the Beast?

One petal drops to the floor: Thriller’s gone, the man in the mirror
fades into history, losing colour, washed by tears and more

The picture of the next petal on the iPhone blurs out while Steve rests
And Amy goes to buy the next one beyond our gardens with mellifluous voice

Harmonising Whitney, oh that’s a petal of my childhood I’ll
Misstep with tears as it sways and twists in the miracle of her wind

Not fast, not furious, gently falling, while Paul Walker walks
The stairway to heaven, staring at another petal on the aging rose

Of my youth’s laughter…oh Robin, oh Bernie, watch those petal go
Shall you make one more laugh infuse the pallid petal back to life?

And shall Chester and Prodigy harmonise with Anne Marie Nzie as another
Petal falls?

I watch them go, the falling petals, like the hair on my head,
Like the black in my chin, I watch the clock take one by one
And replace with something new, different, strange, something afraid
To ride my roller coaster heart, unlike those petals first to join
When life was a song, and the future was sunshine and childhood fun.

(c) Nyonglema