Cyclamens
In the Summer’s heat I bought ’em,
And they barely raised a leaf –
But here in the depths of Autumn
As the roses come to grief,
And while the first of frost is looming,
With the pumpkins come and gone,
So now the cyclamens are blooming
Just as though the sun still shone.
The Root of All Evil
“Since it was first hybridised in the 1660s, the London Plane has slowly taken over the world.”
– The Manchester Gardener
Hybrid sap, mosaic bark,
Twisted bloom and swollen seed,
Bright amid the sooty dark,
This gnarlèd gothic breed.
He sprouts so slyly, this plant in the greenery –
One of the forest and part of the scenery –
No felling him, this mimic of maple, primordial cousin:
Hack off a limb, and this pollarding hydra will shoot out a dozen.
Spawned in the blooms of his immigrant parents,
A cuckoo inherent, a mongrel ill-born.
Wrought in the heart of Enlightenment steam,
From a fever-soaked dream on a dew-sodden morn.
With roots in the clay and his head in Orion,
A vigorous scion, a devil-blest spawn,
A chance aberration, a found’ry mutation,
With lacewood of iron and baubles of thorn.
Invading our cities while shedding his skin,
This cryptic chimera has crept his way in.
And none of his caste have succumbed to senescence, as yet…
Elixir of ever-youth pumps his capillary,
Sweeter than gin from an alley distillery,
Alchemised out of pea-soupers and coal-dust and sweat.
As if he were built out of ratchets and springs,
His ethic for work will be written in rings –
He’s still in his galvanised prime, through the dry-times and wet.
What hath we wrought ?, and what hath we mined ?,
That ought to lie buried or trampled behind –
But workshops of soil are shooting out hordes of his kind.
And what if we find that he just keeps on growing ?,
And fruiting and sowing, till all is entwined ?
Hammered and forged in the mill and pipette –
Who knows how engorged this goliath may get ?
It is uncertain if the first accidental hybrid occured in Spain or in Vauxhall Gardens in London (well, technically in Surrey, but close enough). Interestingly, for all the streets lined with them, I don’t think there are any woods with them growing wild. Infact, it would be fascinating to deliberately plant a patch of wasteland with nothing but London Planes and see how well they self-seed. Yes, I realise that they’re not strictly British natives, but then they’re really native to nowhere.
All Life Is Here
They group all life with near-the-same –
To keep on track, they’ve got a list.
A rose by any other name’s
Still Rosa to a botanist.
I stole this joke from noted Trilobytist Richard Fortey.
The Sisters McBloom
The first to blossom was Daisy,
Yet still a rather homely lass –
Though pretty in a common way,
She spent all year within the grass
The next to blossom was Iris,
Bursting out in the warming Spring –
Showy, delicate, desirous,
Over quickly – just a fling.
The next to blossom was Poppy,
A gothic girl in crimson red –
A heady mix of sharp and soppy,
Fascinated by the dead.
The next to blossom was Rosie,
A redhead maid with cheeks of pink –
Nothing about her was boring or prosy,
And lasting longer than you’d think.
The next to blossom was Heather,
Just as the leaves were starting to turn –
Sturdy and tough, whatever the weather,
And hiding a heart just waiting to burn.
The last to blossom was Ivy,
Much maligned, but on the climb –
Her bauble buds were small though lively,
Coming of age at Christmastime.
Pollarding
Last Autumn, all your leaves came down –
Just like they must each year.
But seeing them when dead and brown,
And unlike all the rest in town,
Is just too late, I fear.
I should have seen them all when green !
But now I wondered – what tree had we here ?
Big, they were, the largest, broadest leaves
In all this urban wood
And finger-lobed, for holding-up the eaves,
And poking now from gutter-sleeves
About the neighbourhood.
My thought was fig, with leaves that big,
Yet far too gropey to do Eve much good.
But I, alas, might never even know,
For once your leaves were shed –
The shears came out and brought you low,
As all your branches had to go
And left your trunk for dead.
No tree could sleep with cuts so deep –
You surely won’t be rising out of bed…
April was well underway before
Your twigs began to sprout.
And then, such tiny hands they bore,
As ev’ry day a couple more
To prove you yet were stout.
At this rate Fall would claim them all
Ere half the sun-grab hands were even out !
But then I looked a little lower,
Where some suckers crowd the roots –
While your wounds may heal the slower,
Round your foot you’re still a grower
Shooting out a dozen shoots.
Succour feeders, weed succeeders,
Sucking sunshine into fruits.
May saw plenty spindly upper twigs –
A hedgehog on each bough,
To carry leaves, so close, so big,
As if they’d snap right off the rig,
But seemed to cling on anyhow.
As June grew late, they put on weight
As fleshy forearms now.
By summer, something stirred in me,
A memory about the bumps
That swell no larger than a pea –
They’re really next’s year’s fruits-to-be.
But here, of course, there were no lumps –
For what life stirred was secateured
Down to your barest stumps.
So will I have to wait another year
To see your fruits in Fall ?
I wonder if I’ll still be here…
You will, of course, that much is clear –
You’re bursting branches big and small.
Unless your twigs are lacking figs
Because you never were a fig at all…
Harvest Song
Reapers sweep the scythe
And sheafers bush the sheaf –
Gathering the harvest,
Gathering the grain –
Threshers thresh the flail
To tear the seed from leaf –
Gathering the harvest,
Holding off the rain –
Winnow-women winnow,
And siever-maidens sieve,
Prizing out the pearls
That the golden ears give –
For to the corn we’re born,
And by the wheat we live.
Bringing home the harvest down the lane.
Once it took a village,
And ev’ry boy to spare –
Gathering the harvest,
Stooked and ricked and mown –
Now it takes machines,
With no use for man or mare –
Gathering the harvest,
Gathered to the bone –
Children of the corn
And cottage-kitchen wives
Are spared the broken backs
And spared the broken lives,
With Summers never shorn
By the sweeping Reaper’s scythes –
So bring us home the harvest on your own.
Tumbleweed
If you want a Russian Thistle,
All you have to do is whistle –
In they tumble on the breeze.
An 1880s stowaway,
A foreign sprout who’s here to stay
By blowing ever West with ease.
Not a thistle, but as hairy,
From the steppes to claim the prairie,
Infiltrating cowboy lore.
Full of thorns and full of seeds,
These drifting immigrants are weeds
Just made to be a metaphor.
The first recording of a Russian Thistle in America is from 1877 in South Dakota, but ‘seven’ has too many syllables…
Sun Serfs
Sunflowers are conformists –
Growing equally tall,
Facing the same direction –
See one, see them all…
Until a shoot is pampered,
And displayed against a wall.
The clones out in the fields
They all droop their heads as one,
But the show-offs in the garden
They are staring at the sun.
But which will yield us seeds and oil
Once the reaping’s done ?
The Travelcard Shuffle
Every morning, all Summer long,
We tie-less masses struggle aboard
The dawdling trains in the hungry platforms,
Like some suburban zombie horde.
Then staring out at rusty sidings,
Ragged lots, and the empty sweltering sky,
As the weaving rails must dance and join,
And the shapeless buddleia bushes go by.
Every evening, all Summer long,
We shirtsleeve masses of sweaty sardines
Cram airless trains on commuter corridors,
Staring at space or staring at screens.
Some folks ride on gilded viaducts,
Mutely surveying the city from high,
While we in the troughs watch the overgrown fences,
As grasping bindweeds bushes go by.
The Other June
June is full of unexpected flowers –
We shouldn’t be surprised at such,
We know these buds exist in theory,
But we never think of them that much.
I don’t mean roses or hydrangeas,
Where the blooms are solely why they’re bought –
But rather in the offhand places
Where the flowers are an afterthought –
The lively sprays of privet blossom, say,
Or potato’s multi-coloured spawn,
Or dead-nettles with snakeheads raised,
And teasing frills of clover on the lawn.
For ev’ry showy thug like bindweed,
There’s small-and-many thyme and poison ivy –
Where oxeyes lord it over the daisies,
The plantain spikes are defiantly lively.
A shock of yellow in the verges,
Wastelands looking oddly brisk and bright,
And brambles showing their softer side,
While shy little sundews and chickweeds fleck with white.
They don’t do it for us of course,
These unassuming emissaries –
And we’ll forget, then be surprised again
By the Autumn’s unexpected berries.
Rhyming Couplets 