When I first posted the photo above last autumn, I simply called it “pink flowers” as I didn’t know what the plant was.
Today, though, I put some in a vase for my mother along with foxgloves and other flowers from her garden and she told me it was red valerian or kiss-me-quick.
Later I went back out to pick some spikes of purple loosestrife to add more height to the flower arrangement and I realised that there is a semi-wild space where most of these traditional flowers are all flourishing.
I haven’t quite worked out when I might want to say kiss me quick behind the shed in my mother’s garden, but I’m sure it’s the sort of phrase that belongs on this blog.
I have lots of poems about kisses and love in general, but as I’m still itching from all the bugs in the garden, this one seems the most appropriate:
Succubus
She comes to him at dawn
sweet-nothings him awake
as she nuzzles past his ear
whispering her desire; she tells
how the scent of his sweat
draws her, how she would risk
her life for love of him,
how she yearns to penetrate
the tangled veil of hair and kiss
the occult curve of his neck.
There’s a little more about the poem in the post Succubus, where that version of it first appeared.
don't confuse the narrator 