Day 6

The prompt today (which you can find here) was to take a line from a book, write a poem using it as a title or starting point, then call it something different from the line you chose.

I took a sentence from a lovely book I’m reading called The Morville Hours by Katherine Swift– all about a woman and her garden: ‘bulbs making leaves but no flowers in the deepening shade’.

The lily of the final title is really lovely – worth googling if you like flowers.

Day Lily Double Dreamer

 

Her leaves rigid

with water. No blooms

unless she dessicates.

 

Can’t stop the rain

of his dramas.

His floods of need.

 

She dreams of a bell jar

in a greenhouse,

with a heater,

 

of dry roots,

papery bulb, air

between its layers.

 

Could a bud nudge

out, squeak up past

turgid leaves?

 

Mango yellow

crepe de chine

outburst,

 

petals curling back,

ruby tunnel

to the centre.

 

She wants the sun

to heat her, dry

her, fire her up.

 

Still the rain

pours down; clatters

off the leaves,

 

douses the ground.

She won’t bloom

in this sodden wood.