Kim Su Fowler, “For All That Love is Worth” – 3rd Place High School Award
For All that Love is Worth
by Kim Su Fowler
Do people not hold a right to self-nurture?
When the iron fist of regime beats at their backs
A land whose peak was under the influence of docile doctrine
Is now picked through like a garden
Flowers wilt and disappear under that overbearing hoe
Falun Gong zhu zai tiantang
And in the heavens, resides virtue
Along with the innocent, in mind and body
Let them grace our earth with their love
What business has the iron hand among us?
Its purpose, not quite definite as care
Blinds a country with what’s so gentle as torture
What’s so liberating as a cell, and what’s so hopeful as death
For the practice of living in peace must
Be too tender a thing for iron skin to know
Free the flowers to drop their seeds in the soil of the earth
People, after all, hold a right to self-nurture, for all that love is worth
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Winner of the 3rd Place High School Award in FoFG’s 2017 Poetry Contest