Suffolk

Though we are not quite half way through November

four poppies are blooming in the front garden.

Papaver orientale: voluptuous,

shell-pink; stamens a dark heliotrope;

a cultivar by Cedric Morris, artist

and plantsman, who searched Suffolk’s hedgerows and fields

for common poppies with softer colours –

that simple weed the usual scoundrels

have made a shibboleth of belonging.

 

A night of wind and rain has downed all but one

in the narrow border, where sedum,

rhodendron, berberis, fresia

are properly autumnal. Between the earth

and the house is a row of paving stones laid

to keep intact Victorian foundations.

Rats are tunnelling beneath the slabs.