I’ve been a little quiet of late – my attention pulled in many different directions, leaving little time for the slow riffs of reflections I tend to offer here. One particular direction found me on stage at the Queen’s Hall in Hexham last week helping Susie White launch her inspiring new book Second Nature (published by Saraband). We had a wide-ranging conversation about making a garden from scratch, in front of an audience of nearly 200 people – most of them keen gardeners by the slant of the Q & A. Susie’s beautiful garden in the Allen Valley is a haven for wildlife – and visiting poets. It’s where I wrote the first draft of my poem ‘Bernard and Cerinthe’, sheltering from a shower in her greenhouse and seeing the beautiful blue flowers of Cerinthe major ‘Purpurascens’ for the first time.
Susie is well-known for her contributions to the Guardian Country Diary, a monthly record of living close to nature in Northumberland. You can read one from last July about a nesting woodcock – also mentioned in her book – here.
I usually linger over the paper versions when I’m laying my fire, saving the best to revisit later. Yesterday’s was definitely a keeper – from Saturday’s Guardian. Jim Perrin writes beautifully about his (and Wordsworth’s) favourite flower – the lesser celandine. It does what Susie’s book did for me – opening up a whole new way of looking at something familiar.
Beautifully written, vibrant and celebratory without being sentimental (a hard balance to achieve), it surprised me with original associations (‘I view it as our native miniature tournesol, or sunflower, following the brief sallies of sunlight, clamming up and drooping under grey skies.’) and fascinating researched information (‘Wordsworth actually wrote three poems to it, all of them fine and complex verses. He doesn’t mention the wealth of names bestowed on it (my favourite is ‘spring’s messenger’), nor does he refer to its exposed pale tubers, cabbage-scented, from which another name tells us of folk-medicine usage: ‘pilewort’’). This was all fresh for me and I’m already looking forward to the next time I see – and smell – these modest little plants.
They grow in abundance not far from here at Watersmeet, a SSSI and botanical paradise – the only place I’ve spotted yellow star of Bethlehem, somewhat less abundant than the celandine, but always a delight early in the year, delicate yet persistent. I found a white cultivated variety for sale outside a shop in Corbridge and, yearning for Spring to stop dragging its feet, I bought it and it’s been gracing my front doorstep for several weeks now. Sturdier than its wild cousin, it has the same cupped calyxes and sharp tips to its petals.
Struck by its botanical name – Ornithogalum umbellatum – with ‘bird’ buried in there and ‘milk’ – I found myself stirred to write a poem for it. My first floral tribute in a while, fitting for Spring, happening regardless of the weather and whatever else is spinning in the vortex of the world. All being well, a three-dimensional version will be on show at Cheeseburn Art when it opens again this year over two weekends in July & August.
Anyway, here’s my poem and an audio clip of me reading it.
Star of Bethlehem
Ornithogalum umbellatum
Sometimes a flower longs to be a bird,
hooking out a shoot like a milky wing,
artless, alive to the air it cleaves –
petals unclasp as tender gaping beaks,
circling a prayerful eye that declares
the flower’s hunger, looking to the sky,
wishing it were a bird wishing it were
a star. Now and then wishing is enough.
Sometimes I also long to be something
else – a wren perhaps, or a silver birch
hatching a plan for catkins, seeds of a dream
of flight, of a guiding star in the night sky.
❧
Plus a small postscript, reminding folk that our next Writing Hour is on the New Moon on Wednesday 8th May 4 - 5pm BST. Let me know if you’d like to come and you’re not already on the list – I’ll need your email to be able to send the zoom link. Thanks.
Take care
L
X
If you’ve enjoyed this, feel free to share it with a friend…
Or let me know how it landed below – what wild flowers are catching your eye just now where you are…
It landed beautifully, Linda. I came late to this post, as I have to many flowers. Now I'm noticing them all in my local wood. Primroses are quite shy, aren't they, with that pale yellow. I've been enjoying the abundance of wild garlic too.
beautiful Linda beautiful flower beautiful voice! Thank you. Today at the allotment I wondered how to do nothing when everything needs doing at this time of year: the pruning, the sowing, sifting compost, mowing the grass, preparing beds. . . . I collected dandelion leaves for a salad, nettles for soup, and left the yarrow for later - no flowers yet.