on a theme

Although all the images in this post have something in common, I’m not sure that they are, strictly speaking, variations on a theme. That, I think, would imply that the theme had been chosen and the photos taken to illustrate it.

What really happened was that I was looking through the mass of photos I have taken recently trying to find connections: it was a post hoc selection, not premeditated.

The challenge now is to find a poem with yellow flowers in.

There are always daffodils, of course, but those are really too firmly linked to early spring to work alongside pictures taken in July.

I suspect mimosa flowers rather earlier in the year, too, but since I’ve never posted this piece on the blog, it seems like a good time to get it out of the archives and dust it down:

Carabanchel Alto

Here balconies are caged 
and the sun hesitates 
to creep through gritted glass. 
Broken panes  gash bolt-holes
in the gloom.  Wax flowers fade
 and grey geraniums  give up
their ghosts,  discouraged 
by the rainbow  writing
on the walls.

Mimosa trembles in the square.