Artist

Alexander Averin

Wednesday 26 June 2013

Buttercups


 

 
Artist Marjorie Wilson

 
Ranunculus
 
On my antique oak table the French slipware
jug cradles such a temporary fragility.
I could not be disturbed by their profusion
in my garden for there could be nothing
malefic about buttercups; their joyous
yellows are never baleful or harmful,
thriving as they do even more so now
in our poor, drenched and depleted earth.
I store their magic along with their vision
in the compartment of memory that
I keep for those vile, vexed days and wonder why
we cannot be like the buttercups.
Could we not persist, rise up and open
our eyes wide enough to see between the
enclosing, dying  trees? When times are shaky,
the light is low and all about us is rapidly
breaking in pieces, should we not spread ourselves
in battle, against the odds. Instead we 
sleepwalk within a cosy, manufactured
reality; instead we make no sound.

 

Cait O’Connor

 

9 comments:

bright star said...

I love your poem and the painting above is lovely.

Frances said...

Cait, it was so good to taken in your words, and enjoy them, and appreciate them. And then...to read them again, and another time, and know that your poetry has given me a wonderful place to visit when vexation walks through my own postcode.

xo

Dave King said...

Beautifully put. The voice is compelling.

Friko said...

..we make no sound...

Buttercups are everywhere around me, tall and proud and golden in the long grass. It is a good year for yellow.

LeeAnn at Mrs Black's said...

How wonderful, thank you for sharing. And, I love your new profile picture with those shawls how the light comes through them. Stunning! Minerva ~

Splenderosa said...

Simply splendid, Cait! So beautifully written. And, I enjoyed so much. xx's from Texas....

beth said...

you are a beautiful poet !!

Vee said...

Those final lines spoke so clearly to me...

Mary said...

I really like these lines:

When times are shaky,
the light is low and all about us is rapidly
breaking in pieces, should we not spread ourselves
in battle, against the odds.

YES, we should indeed....