flowers – Page 25 – don't confuse the narrator

weeds and words

April has brought the cuckoo and forced the lilacs into bloom. Now it’s even bringing a few showers. They don’t seem to be doing much to pierce the drought of March, though, as they barely dampen the surface of the ground and then evaporate with wind and the suddenly dazzle of sunshine.

Still, they are enough to have prompted a few more weeds to flourish and the photo has reminded me of an unfinished poem of frustrated love entitled I want. This is the third stanza:

I want daisies on the lawn in clumps
of seven to fit my footstep, a universe
of dandelion globes and the chance
a simple breath can make it
any time I like.

Down by the river the other day, it would have been easy enough to put your foot on seven daisies, but I haven’t seen any in my garden and I’m sure summer isn’t really here yet. Perhaps the river bank is as inaccurate a time keeper as dandelion clocks tend to be.

spring is sprung

Well, Google tells me that it’s the first day of spring today, although to be honest, the sky is more wintry than I’ve seen it in weeks, if not months. So the photos aren’t from today – and they aren’t all from my garden – although they were all taken during the last week:

a promise of lilacs

Surely it’s April that should be “breeding lilacs out of the dead land”, not January? But here the buds are already beginning to show signs of breaking into life.

Mind you, unless there’s some rain soon, I don’t quite know how much energy the trees will have for producing flowers, especially as I forgot to dead head them when they finished flowering last year.

At which point, it seems appropriate to post this abandoned draft from a few years back:
Continue reading “a promise of lilacs”

blue

The rain finally came at the weekend. To be honest, since it had waited so long, it might have stayed away for another 24 hours and let the villagers have their fiesta fun all through Saturday night.

I suppose I could witter on about words like ‘petrichor‘, but instead I’ll just post this picture of a morning glory that I took while I was down in southern Spain earlier this month. It’s certainly a lot bluer than the sky at the moment.

roses

I remember a summer evening
 when you brought me roses, 
full-blown, blowzy,
 stolen from a neighbour’s garden.

I laughed,  
and listened to your promises
 as you crushed the falling petals 
underfoot.

Originally published in The Coffee House, Issue 10, 2003.

The old poem is included mainly as accompaniment to the photo, which I wanted to include to add some colour to the page after a number of fairly wordy posts. However, now I’m here and on the subject of roses…
Continue reading “roses”