in the towering gardens of Babylon

VIOLA

I saw two kinds of violets today,
Or at least, I think I did.

I stooped to brush my fingers across their leaves.
It's not like I can really tell at a glance;
I can't quite speak their language
Though I pray to understand.
I tell them,
"Hello,"
"Pleasant rains this evening!"
"I'm sorry."

I don't know how to ask them about their children.
I don't know how to tell them about my lover.
I am an outsider.
I am a settler.
Raised and instructed from birth
To see them as a single mass,
A monetizable unit
Measured and cut
Rather than the individuals they are,
The livelihoods they inhabit,
The associations they build,
That unbroken continuum of existences which they comprise
Which we summarize: "diversity."

I made a chart to help myself remember the differences:
These here are bald;
Those are tanned from the sun;
These tattoo their faces.
Most of us don't know
And will tell you outright that they don't care.
But it matters to me.
If I am to live around them,
If I am to work around them,
I should know;
I should act like their neighbor
And not the occupier that I know myself to be.

There is so much more to these flowers
Who are used,
Who are held
By those of us who have the means to do so,
Than what we are told to see in them.
So much life being lived
Beyond the scope of our understanding
Simply because it is in the interest
Of those who profit
To have it be so.

And yet even the sparing distinctions that I know
Are acts of oppression,
Artifices,
Constructs of my people and not theirs,
Differences they freely ignore,
Names that mean nothing to them
And tell them nothing of themselves.

The flower has no such thing as an endonym
In any language that i could ever comprehend.

I take care not to disturb the violets as I rake.