Do-ray-me-far-so

When I was a nipper, a kid, a boy

wild flowers grew through the concrete waste

all around our new estate:

flowers rooted in the cracks along the road

just for me

these wild flowers were not weeds

these flowers were a splash of yellow echoing the sun

a pale reflection of the egotistical sublime

O! we gazed through the heat haze

and, in awe, saw what was really

always there: the beauty that is beneath man’s notice

............

Now, my imagination streams into these brooks running

beneath the few trees that still, in a wet June, in a different century,

throw dappled sunlight to light the way

towards the hidden groves of blue bells

where, so-long ago, we lay and dreamed of the secret

garden where roses would bloom in wintertime

and footsteps would glide into silence, and all the time,

my fragile being breaks up, fades into the spontaneous sublime.