write now

This week in July has seen the highest temperatures recorded in our country.  At the same time, my throat burned with a fiery infection and my voice faded away.  

In isolation, I have looked out at my garden, enjoyed the hot red of the lucifers and marvelled at the abundance of my passionflowers.

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My gardening guru, Margaret, tells me they are an unusual plant to flourish in Scottish gardens.  I fell in love with the passionflower decades ago in London and have always put one in my garden as a priority ever since.  Here's a poem dedicated to Margaret.

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After all, what is life without passion?

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22.7.22

Passionflower

A flower unlike a flower that’s a flower is a flower is a flower

vibrant

softly spiked

sometimes inducing spite.

(A passer-by once cut clean through its roots on the railings 

leading to my London door.)

An unassuming circlet beds a wheel of spokes

indigo, white, blue,

perfectly dipped, double layered and pinned -

no bleed -

immaculate execution

more industry than nature.

Circles circle within circles -

five cones of yellow pollen proffered to the bees

a three-pronged grip to guide us to the stars.

Not romantic like the soft petalled rose or seductive like the scented honeysuckle yet still the passionflower makes me swoon 

prolific

enigmatic 

seemingly short-lived 

yet later, much much later, bearing fruit.

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