This is the month when lupins show off their pink, white, and blue spikes and star-burst leaves, their centres glistening with water-droplets after rain.
Helen B Cruickshank employs this garden treat as her opening image in this simple but wise meditation. It can be found in her Collected Poems, published by Reprographia in 1971.
RAIN AND BIRDSONG
A raindrop in
A lupin leaf
May lift away
A load of grief.
A willow-warbler's
Ghost of song
May cut a sorrow's
Binding thong.
A primrose in
A lonely wood
May cool an anger
In the blood.
For man's inventions,
Speed, and noise,
Are fretful pleasures,
Tiring toys;
But Nature's simple
Remedies
Are rain, and birdsong,
Silences.
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