QUEEN OF THE NIGHT

 

That flower right next to us,

its honey perfume coloured the sea

and all the air breathed after dark.

 

You told me how it grew back home

profusely in the villages, but that

you and your sisters would steal it

 

from a neighbour's garden just for fun

which made me smile at this illicit side

of tricks and secrets as a general rule.

 

Yet as we sat enjoying midnight,

you chose to let me under your defence

for once, with the story of a flower;

 

soft white petals, yellow stamens,

their nocturnal aroma like scented heat

bringing us perhaps a little closer.

 

 

Poesis Novae Litterature, number four, January 2019.