Foxglove
 
We were only making perfume from rose petals
and those leaves I plucked through the fence
that later would earn me a clip round the ear
for stealing Mr Johnson’s lemon balm.
 
I can’t remember if we dabbed the dark potion
on our wrists like that poor woman in Salisbury
who was accidentally handed death in an atomiser
by a lover so poor he got it from a dustbin.
 
How lonely I was in Hull in that garden
with the espaliered pear on the garage wall
and the red, white and blue border
and those raspberries full of maggots.
 
Next week I will go back there and peer in,
dare myself to swing on our back gate
next to Gillie Tivey’s house and push my thumb
inside the soft finger of a foxglove.

Carole Bromley

If you have any thoughts on this poem, Carole Bromley would be pleased to hear them.