We all want our poems to trend and get views.
But when that is your focus, you're the one who will lose.

Striving for popularity can cause you to lose clarity.
Pulling you down a hole of insularity.

Instead, look ahead!
There are new horizons to be tread!
New poems to bloom happily in your garden bed,
no matter whether they are noticed...or even read!

Who would think a rose so sweet
Would dry and crumble at the feet
And blooms that scent the night and day
Would steal a heart, then fade away

With petals soft and fondly red
Sweet essence fills an addled head
Then turns to dust before the eyes
Leaving naught, but sad surprise

Who would think such thorny vine
Could lift a blossom as divine
And by the stem on which it stands
Could so wrong an offered hand

Such strength and beauty is rarely true
A blessing owned by very few
As 'neath the soil, in winters keep
There sleeps a rose to tear a cheek

Who would think that perfect bloom
Could be a bane, a curse of doom
So fine a sight, yet in disguise
A rose to ***** and blind the eyes

Whilst walking my father and I
Fell upon words that brought
Out the skylight in a window
And made a dog bark for sweets
We shared words together
Hand in hand with each other
Trampling roads near shops
And under railway aqueducts
Seeing the daffodils growing free
The bubbling of stones in a brook.

Love Mary **