Planting Words, Fuchsias, & Poem of the Week, 10
In recent years, the sheltered patio in my south-facing back garden has been dominated by large terracotta pots of leafy fuchsia plants. As with onions, my gardening husband has a tendency towards excessive zeal when it comes to growing things.Unfortunately, it’s usually September before the flowers show themselves in their full glory – by which time, I’m back at work.
In spite of my return to work last week, I’ve still made time to browse through more book/writing-blogs. I particularly liked the title of Fiona Robyn’s writer-and-reader’s blog for the way it connects writing to gardening – it’s also interesting in its own right.
As this is the time of year I tend to associate with the delicate drooping heads of red, pink, and mauve, I didn’t have to think too hard about my selection of the Poem of the Week. 
THE VISITORS
The Head, who is not fond children,
has chosen for his office the small round room
at the top of the tower, where he cannot hear
the shrill recitations of tables or psalms or
into the valley of death rode the six-hundred.
He has no time for fairy tales and never wonders
about Rapunzel or the Lady of Shallott.
Few people know that he was married once.
His passion is fuchsias.
Not the wild Cuchulain’s Blood
that flaunts its riots of scarlet tassels
by the winding roads of Galway,
the simple flowers his wife had craved
in memory of home. The ones he cultivates
are petticoated mauve, or pink and lilac,
veined in purple – plants that he
can grow in pots and regulate
by pinching out their early shoots.
He’ll tell you that he never dreams at night.
The closest that he lets his own mind drift
into that shifting region at the back of the north wind,
is when, after the final bell, his room in the tower
is the only one in the echoing school with a living soul,
and he fills his head with pictures of his hothouse
crammed with cuttings from his favourites, his darlings.
When he sees the first faint lines on his curved white wall
he thinks they’re cobwebs, tries to wipe them off
but they grow bolder. Scrawl themselves in tendrils,
stems, leaves, petals, calling out their names:
Fairy Cheeses, Cluckweed, Boneset, Larkspur,
Tetterwort, Clockdindle, Ripple Grass.
Rooted to the rug, he blocks his ears against the chanting:
Beggars Button, Cushy Cow, Rags and Tatters,
Foxes Cloat. Then colour emerges, and texture
and the smell of waste ground and damp woods.
Bad Man’s Oatmeal, Eldrum, Devil’s Milk.
As earth begins to fill his shoes
he shakes them off and stumbles to the door.
Kathleen, Kathleen, Kathleen
I wrote this a few years ago (2005?) when I and a few other local poets* were invited to take part in a project at the Ikon Gallery in Birmingham. We went round the different art exhibitions, absorbing the pictures and the atmospheres they created.
*I can’t lay my hand right now on the names of some of the other poets and artists, so instead of leaving anyone unmentioned, I’ll include them all in a later post.
The picture shows the exterior of the Ikon Gallery itself. I was intrigued to learn that it had started life as a school for deprived children, and that the room at the top of the tower was actually the Headmaster’s office.
Inside this small room with its rounded walls, there were raised beds of earth, filled with samples of weeds and wild flowers, while in a different part of the building, there was a complete data base of all the common names for these plants.
I couldn’t resist those wonderful names – and the mini-story-poem took shape.
It was published in 2006 in The White Car, the eighth anthology of poetry from Ragged Raven Press
