a kiss blowing on the wind

The flowers have returned
and we too return to stand with the stone
and shed as tears on summertime grass
our love once again for you.
The sky is high and blue,
couds white thought-bubbles -
messags from angels and from god -
fleeting shadows painted across the meadows
and the trees and cows amongst the buttercups
chewing cud as in thought
mulling memories of meals in sunshine shared.

A song lifts to us across the deep tops of these great oaks
beneath which a child swings.
Her hair runs rampant branches down her slim back
and her skin is pale as mist.
A song murmurs from her lips, her eyes closed and smiling,
white dress scattered with daisies and stained with the juices of grassy banks.

I hear the song and I close my eyes.
This presence moves me to poetry and to pain -
the edge of the earth curves before me
and the sky wheels overhead dizzying the senses -
filled with pollen and dust - high on summer time returned.

the earth the air the fire the water
return return return return

And the flowers have returned
the elder and the rose and Jasmine's regal perfume
poppies, feverfew, allium, cosmos adn ampatiens,
and we too have returned to remember and to celebrate you,
and through song sung on flute and guitar
and in tune to the percussion of dancers' feet
we hear again your voice
we smell in the earth your skin
and we know that you are one with all that is
and the rhythms of the earth and the colours of the sky
are you
and as we are present with them so are you present with us -
a kiss blowing on the wind -
you great guardian of this our sacred tribe
every moment within us
and every moment around us
reborn.

digitalis

I bought two digitalis plants today.
Foxgloves.

Frecked cream insides to stand with the hollyhocks against the small south-facing wall where only last Saturday I planted a rose for my father who is burried in red soil far from this loam. I have never successfully grown a rose before - not really - not the kind with thousands of fragrant flowers all summer for years and years - but this one I will tend like a grave.

Digitalis - The Collins English Dictionary 1989

1. any Eurasian scrophulariaceous plants of the genus Digitalis, such as foxgloves, having bell-shaped flowers and a basal rosette of leaves
2. a drug prepared from the dried leaves or seeds of the foxglove: a mixture of glycosides used medicinally as a heart stimuleant [C17; from the New Latin, from Latin: relating to a finger (refering to the corollas of the flower); based on German Fingerhut foxglove, literally: finger-hat]

Digitalis. Foxglove. Finger-hat.

Fingers.

Writing fingers.

Right now.

Wright now.

At last.