KEY OF HEAVEN
Here amongst Milton's
Lycidas...a cowslip's
skeleton
pressed between its pages
blossomed back in 1923
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
1923.
*
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 23!
I no longer remember how to make cowslip wine and I never did.
A book I didn't buy in the Oxfam Bookshop Guildford but did inspire me in a completely different way. One never knows what one will find at any one time in my favourite bookshop.
