A Falling Petal: A Poem on Distortion

There are moments when the world feels slightly unsteady, as if something just beyond sight is pressing and pulling at its edges.

A Falling Petal is an ekphrastic engagement with Edvard Munch’s The Scream, resting in that suspended tension between calm and rupture.

A Falling Petal

Edvard Munch, The Scream, 1893. National Museum, Oslo. Public Domain. Source.

It swayed with a swish

escaping the lovers' kiss

landing on the pavement of the wooden bridge.

Clutters of giggles spilled out of a happy child,

"Kill it!"

A single rose coloured the cheek of a damsel,

"Crush it!"

The men in coat slip silently past me,

"Slap them!"

Cries the voice behind me.

While the child giggled,

And the damsel blushed,

The rose smiled

Bending into repose,

in the brightness of dusk

As if no loss had occurred,

Only I

Saw, under the crush of a sparrow's perch,

a petal die,

Standing steadily like the bridge

Which none seemed to feel crumble

Under my feet

Like the petal under the bird's.

So I let out a whim as mild as a siren,

Screech!!!!!!!!!

None paid respect to the legacy of the petal that once pasted a smile on a madman's face,

Who now under the bridge peacefully lay,

floating like the breeze of memories of his good old days.

- Mercy Rebonica

Tales of a Tattler