© 2026 WNIJ and WNIU
Northern Public Radio
801 N 1st St.
DeKalb, IL 60115
815-753-9000
Northern Public Radio
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations

Perspective: In this world of flowers

Pixabay

How wondrous that we live in a world where flowers bloom every spring.

That out of all the galaxies we ended up on this planet, where flowers rise from the soil. They bloom in gardens and along roadsides, — even in the harsh deserts of Death Valley and of Iran. Out of dust and heat, something delicate insists on growing and blooming.

This spring, our world of flowers is being torn apart.

Schoolchildren are bombed in their classrooms. Flowers pressed between the pages of their books turn to ash. Bombs fall from blue skies over Iran and Israel, all over the Middle East leaving families to search through rubble for the scattered petals of their lives.

These bombs are sent by hollow men who order others to leave their homes and families to drop bombs on other families. Powerful men so empty there are cobwebs where there once was a soul. Men who have forgotten they live in a world of flowers and men unable to feel.

This spring, will the white-throated robin still sing in Iran’s mountains? Will the Persian rose find the light beneath skies darkened by the black smoke of oil fires blotting out the sun? Will white lilies be found this Easter in the rubble of bombed Lebanon churches? Will children who survive this war remember through their trauma and grief that this is a world with flowers?

I’m Dan Kenney, and this is my perspective.

Dan Kenney is a retired elementary school teacher and the founder of DeKalb County Community Gardens. He's also a published poet and writer.