five red tulips in a white pot V

I’m revisiting my “five red tulips in a white pot” series to finish it, and in response to Tuesday’s dVerse prompt  “songs of unreason“.  The challenge is to use one of the specified lines from Jim Harrison as an epigraph. I chose: 

“After last night’s storm the tulip petals are strewn across the patio where they mortally fluttered.”- Church, Jim Harrison

 

The flame-filled cups have fallen
scattered and spilt
like drops of blood on the porch,
soon dried and scuffed away.
The Persian-green foliage,
bleached to palest straw,
was carried off
by the summer wind.
Now just the five pale bulbs remain,
safe-hidden for their nine month wait,
forgotten
in their russet-brown wrapping paper
soil-slumbering in the white pot.

Good things only #3 / sevenling (roses)

Finally the teaching-year is done for me, with just graduation to go next week.   So I’m hoping to find more time for reading and writing now.

It’s been a challenging year, and the last few months in particular have been difficult. So here is a floral pick-me-up, for myself and anyone else who needs to stop and smell the roses.

1.  The lilies are just starting to bloom! First the Asiatics, but soon the Orientals and trumpets will be blooming too!

2. Hearts-ease – also known as Johnny-jump-ups or violas – are in bloom in all sorts of unexpected places. These first snuck into my garden ten years ago as stow-aways in a pot of something else, and they’ve spread to come up year after year in pots and bathtubs and garden beds.

in the moonlight of other nights

For the dVerse “in the light of other days” prompt, a request to share a memory, recent or past.  This is a little of both, and the possum shown in the pictures here, that I took last night, may well have been the baby of an earlier season’s “poss”.

Poss has come visiting again.

Caught in the torchlight
she runs up a post
only to discover her way blocked.

Was there no roof here last time she visited?
Or has she forgotten?

Memory is a fickle friend,
hers and mine.

five red tulips in a white pot IV

Holding aloft their fiery cups,
flames they have caught
drop
by
drop
day
by
day
as they fall from the sun,
they are full now,
filled to overflowing,
their bowls brimming
and their petals saturated.
And yet still they are insatiable,
glowing like greedy coals
that are not dimmed by the sunlight
but fed by it.

Fourth in the “five red tulips in a white pot series” – and yes, there are only four tulips in flower. One was eaten by something. But 80% is pretty good. 

five red tulips in a white pot III

How can I describe
these whorls that have risen from the soil?
Somewhere between green and blue,
cyan, teal-green…? Or… yes… Persian-green,
this name so apt for the colour of tulip leaves,
that mountain flower

transformers

For the dVerse prompt “creepies and crawlies“, a sonnet about slaters:

When the sun is up and the birds about
you can find them, if you know where they creep
into the crevices, all flattened out –
the slate-grey slaters, all huddled in sleep.

I want to write something about spring

I want to write something about spring,
about the scent of the tomato seedlings on the window sill
about the way the tiny glassy hairs on their stems catch the sunlight
and glitter like gold and silver tinsel.

five red tulips in a white pot II

Five white hearts
wrapped in brittle brown paper,
stir in the dark,
reach out.

Standing in a flurry of snow,
a scatter of hail,
I am torn between eagerness
to see green shoots,
and trepidation at their daring.

 

Five red tulips in a white pot I

daffodil tete a tete

The first of my tete a tete daffodils has just opened! Spring must be very close indeed, even though there was a brief flurry of snow in Canberra on the weekend.  So here is a celebratory ha’ sonnet. 

 

 

A tete a tete
with daffodils,
“Well met! Well met!”
their greeting fills
me with delight,
and hope, despite
so grey a day.

 

 

gardener’s despair

This morning’s dVerse prompt from Claudia is garden(ing)!

I love gardening, but it’s a constant struggle here with the hungry wildlife and my own insatiable pig. Most recently the edge of the mouse plague has been the problem. 

Fucking kangaroos
and bastard possums!
They’ve bent my trees and
eaten the blossoms!

And the cockatoos!
That hooligan mob,
chew off the branches
to finish the job.