Alan Dixon
Shouting primroses
Primroses shout!? Impossible! But do you know
How insistent that pale face can be?
If you had a leg that imitated wood
- Smooth and hard and stiff below the knee,
But with unoakish aches and pangs, you might agree.
I stumble out. Jaywalker! Fool! I hear one of them say,
To be knocked flying by a hard car, not to be looking.
Not that you were distracted, that time, by me.
Walk out before we fade from the safe hillside.
We've come down into the garden to chivvy you,
To shout at you - quite out of character.
So I thank you primroses. But what does my love of you
- Amounting to wild enthusiasm - say about me?
Why not the cowslip? A lip or a slip?
Am I being faithless to the cranesbill, the herb robert,
Who can't be a proper Robert without a capital?
But he comes later to replace you, and so is excusable.
You wouldn't mind; you don't look prim to me.
I remember waving to you from a coach at Easter, in Brittany,
You by the roadsides, and no one else seemed to notice.
I felt like a gushing girl, your thrilled girlfriend.
On the front seat the man with the monocle
Who thought glasses were pansy... I'd forgotten the pansy.
But no, the pansy never excited me, never so much.
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