SALISBURY LANDSCAPES POEM 5

Happy Valentines!

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“Under the bluffs that overhung the marsh he came upon thickets of wild roses, with flaming buds, just beginning to open. Where they had opened, their petals were stained with that burning rose-colour which is always gone by noon, -- a dye made of sunlight and morning and moisture, so intense that it cannot possibly last. . . must fade, like ecstasy. Niel took out his knife and began to cut the stiff stems, crowded with red thorns. He would make a bouquet for a lovely lady; a bouquet gathered off the cheeks of the morning. . . these roses, only half awake, in the defencelessness of utter beauty.” Willa Cather

Bouquet

There are flowers for us my love perhaps,

Not in the field as they are too tender,

Their soft petals beautiful and vulnerable,

Give way to thorns and spines as they survive.

The field is wide and its expanse has much,

Small animals and insects live out of sight,

Among the grasses that feed and shelter them,

So like we they miss spontaneous flower there.

I can draw you a bouquet from a hot house,

For in my imagination I can see them present,

Perhaps it is foolish for flowers are to smell,

So then we would have to remember alone.

The thorny sprays are the same to me more

Savage than their cousin they protect

Themselves and the verdure unthinkingly,

Their task a natural and just pursuit.

“How right it is to love flowers and the greenery of pines and ivy and hawthorn hedges; they have been with us from the very beginning.” Vincent van Gogh