Green Summer Gold ~Vivien Steels

This garden – a potpourri of plants

growing summer in a burnished bowl;

an autobiography written in trees,

grass, meadows, flowerbeds and hedgerows;

corridors of green for wildlife to run

along stripes of shadows

between sunshine and showers;

for birds to fly across a corner

where a memorial to a treasured cat

is landscaped with a slate-blue plaque

and a clematis clinging its heart

around a laburnum dripping gold

onto the bench below.

Night brings the silence of eternity

into sapphire skies punctuated with stars

and all the flowers,

whose nature is to bloom white,

throw up their moon-white pallor

to shine more brightly than the day’s

green summer gold.

Published in Moonstone No: 95 - August 2004