The man, from what they'd heard,

Had been driven out of business

By mobs of people gathering for a chance at their own words,

Pieces swiftly moving as if in chess

He lost his influence,

And so they were let out early, Not

even made to pay much extra penance

as the system was no longer fed and bought

But, by that point, it was too late

The world gray and dark and cold

filled with the gloomy caliginosity of hate

And no sign of the gentle nature of the not-so-very-old

They found themselves standing before the great husk

Of the factory, gazing

Into its broken ruins, rusted orange as the dusk

And burnt black as coal, memories of pain within blazing

They walked though, dazed,

As if in a trance

That was when they saw it among the razed ashes,

The little thing still fighting for its chance

The yellow flower was no more than a weed, and yet

Its beauty shone among the broken shards of their world and its threads

It proudly stood in stubborn denial, despite being beset

by so many tragedies, and as they heard birdsong once again, held so very high was its yellow head