to me
there be daffodils, bluebells,
crocuses, forget-me-not
in this English spring-time
rain cold from bluer sunlit skies
showers occasional drop
heavy hail bringing
back snow,
cold sunlight white yet in
blue will bloom green to summer
2004, Cambridge
—
This poem features in my recently published (first) volume of poetry. I write in my postlude that these less polished older poems offer snapshots of my output as it has moved through its development and offer a glimpse of adolescent whimsy for which I am now a little nostalgic.
The ‘real’ events of this poem happened in mid-summer, yet the artistic license of posing events in an English spring-time breathes freshness and new growth into the emotional sentiments and harks back to the listed flowers of a song we learnt at school, “In an English Country Garden.” Not likely to be judged a mature echo in the tradition of nature poems, this little thought sprung from youthful infatuation in a medieval university town surrounded by pastoral countryside. There were lots of English flowers; all the very flowers I had read about, sung about, read about in poems. I was giddy on travel on youth, and on current buns eaten under willows on the riverbank.
[Image credit: http://www.silkartist.co.uk/practical.htm]
Click here to preview “Shining in Brightness” my first volume of poetry.
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Beaded Quill 