Tag Archives: Poetry

Blossom on the snow

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Now falls the blossom on the snow
As through the cherry March winds blow
And through my heart the seasons flow.

1989

Phlox

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This morning I could suddenly smell
The phlox in my grandfather’s garden.
You were lying there beside me, still
Hardly awake and the whole room was
Filled with flowers from before you were born.
We ran down the garden path, looking
For windfalls, my sister and I, and
The pink and white phlox grew over us,
Swarming with brown bees dusty with pollen.
You said “what are you thinking about?”
As I stared at the ceiling. “I can
Smell the phlox in my grandfather’s garden.”
I was thinking of my own deep joy
And the depth of my sister’s sadness.

16 February 1969

Girton (response by Lucy Norman)

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And Springs and Springs
Have come and from the aged wood
New leaf and gentle blossom
Quite constant to appointment.
But you, the author,
Where do you reside
If not the apple-bough?

Its years and years since
Your lifeless body
Was carried through the driving rain
Ahead of black umbrellas
That perched like crows
To mourn our pointless way.

And yet we seek you still,
Your dark-haired daughters,
To hold us high
Above the agony
Of life.

By Lucy Norman March 2015