Children whispering in the garden …
what do they know?
Let them hear leaves in the shade.
Let them taste honey, pepper, sage.
Let them feel the rain falling and falling.
Let them speak after we’ve walked away.
𐫱
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Diana Keren Lee’s poetry has appeared in Boston Review, Denver Quarterly, Hayden’s Ferry Review, The New Republic, Pleiades, Witness, and elsewhere. She was awarded a Poetry Society of America Chapbook Fellowship and has received fellowships from MacDowell and Yaddo.
About the Poem
“I wrote ‘For the Future’ in direct response to the call for protection spell submissions. ‘Protection spell’ brought the care of children to mind. My poem was inspired by the memory of seeing two young children in a community garden sitting beneath large sunflowers and whispering words known only to them. I thought of my parents, who lived through the Korean War as children, and of children in Gaza, Sudan, Ukraine, and elsewhere — amid violence and climate change, poem as prayer.”