WELL VERSED: Looking for Flowers

There are no flowers
In this small, sick land
The people long for them, need
The sweet smells, the
Bursting out on a spring morning

But all the flowers here shrunk
Years ago into summer snowflakes
Tethered to the blood red ground,
Covered in its dust

But still they all search for flowers
The men inspecting emptied bottles
The women hoping for boquets
From their hopeless husbands,
All the while sweeping the arid dust into piles
And watering it dutifully

I've seen men and women searching the red dust
Straining it for even a seed
And as I knelt with them
Begging this stubborn land
I saw that they had flowers in their eyes