BY ANY OTHER NAME
For Sandra Lewis
We were unsure where to put the Christmas Rose,
aka hellebore niger, you brought us
this December gone. We chose, pro tem, the room
where I write, with its two long windows.
The light the north facing one lets in
is unambiguous. The other accepts
occasional sun from late mornings
to early evenings. I write in a corner
by a wall of books. With its much travelled
piano, its bodhrán missing a drumstick,
a clutch of recorders, a violin case
under the chaise longue, we call this space,
not wholly ironically, ‘The Music Room’.
Its harmonics sound through my poems.
This so-called rose – an ancient cure for madness,
a guard against evil, no more connected
particularly to Yuletide other than
it flowers as the year turns through darkness –
is, I learn, a distant buttercup. Here
its subtle beauty thrives.