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Jan 2019
KEY OF HEAVEN

Here amongst Milton's
Lycidas...a cowslip's

skeleton
pressed between its pages

blossomed back in 1922
its ghost haunting the book

its head bent over the line
"Fame is no plant that grows on mortal soil."

staining the word "Fame"
with its own lost shadow

the unknown woman in
the photographs laughs

at my discovering her
dressed in black and white in black and white

hands stuck in pockets
defiantly staring back at me

she more real
than me

the only other photo
she has removed her hands

from her pockets
producing them like a magic trick

they lay on her lap
like limpid rabbits

curiously alive
somehow

a sheen of sunlight
catches her Marcel wave

Petrella
the photograph names her

in writing as elegant
as she

early spring
1922.

*

Key of Heaven is only one of the names for the common cowslip( Primula Veris ). It travels under other names such as cuy lippe, herb peter, paigle, peggle, key flower, fairy cups, petty mulleins, crewel, buckles, palsywort, plumrocks and tittypines.

There was also a recipe for a delicious sparkling cowslip wine. Alas the book was too expensive for my means and I was more interested in the cowslip dying between Milton's lines and the woman who was Petrella back in the days of the year 19 and 22!

I no longer remember how to make cowslip wine and I never did.
Donall Dempsey
Written by
Donall Dempsey  Guildford
(Guildford)   
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