For My Grandmother
This lovely flower fell to seed; Work gently, sun and rain; She held it as her dying creed That she would grow again.
Countee Cullen
This lovely flower fell to seed; Work gently, sun and rain; She held it as her dying creed That she would grow again.
Countee Cullen’s short poem turns a grandmother’s death into the image of a flower falling to seed. The speaker does not describe an ending so much as a change of form: the lovely bloom is gone, but its seed remains, holding the promise of new life.
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