Wildflowers
A small boy is sitting on the grass in a wood by a little pool. It is night — a large creamy yellow moon hangs in the sky. He is surrounded by wild flowers. My first memory, and, like all memories, fiction. The boy looks out of the memory straight back at me.
*
I remember you so clearly
The first one through the door
I return to find you drifting
Too far from the shore
…..sings Tom Petty in his 1994 album ‘Wildflowers’, his best in my opinion. Memories, like flowers, bloom and fade.
The first verse of the title track goes
You belong among the wildflowers
You belong in a boat out at sea
Sail away, kill off the hours
You belong somewhere you feel free
Don’t we all, or at least don’t we want to? Sometimes even to feel free from our memories when they become wily strangers.
*
I rarely have flowers in the house — it just never occurs to me. But recently, on impulse, I picked up a couple of bunches of daffodils from Asda, £1 each. I took them home and stuck them in two old jugs. I was cheered by their brightness. Unfortunately, after a day or two the stems seemed unable to bear the intense yellow of the flowers and just keeled over. I am told I should have trimmed the stems. Next time.
*
Narcissus, the beautiful youth, out hunting one day stopped by a clear pool for a drink. Seeing his reflection he fell in love with the face looking back at him. He bent down to kiss it but as soon as his lips touched the water the image rippled away. Eventually, in dire frustration he stabbed himself to death. From his blood the next spring grew a daffodil. Perhaps he should have heeded the attentions of the nymph, Echo, whose breathy repetitions, ‘I love you, I love you’, gradually faded into the shadows of the wood.
*
Somehow the purity of the daffodil’s yellow carries with it the intensity of longing and love. Here is a poem celebrating yellow, but the yellow of tulips this time.
Just Yellow
Over your shoulder
in the sunlit yard
yellow tulips crammed
into a pewter tub
just yellow no
crimson gesturing or
blush of magenta
but the just yellow
and you elsewhere
in the cane chair by the window
one leg tucked beneath you
and the book settled in your lap
just reading.
Who is the girl in the chair, for it is a girl I imagine? A memory or a mirage?
*
But in the words of that great road song from ‘Wildflowers’, it’s time to move on..
It’s time to move on, time to get going
What lies ahead, I have no way of knowing
But under my feet, baby, grass is growing
It’s time to move on, it’s time to get going
Tom Petty 1950 - 2017
I have booked a room in a Travelodge for the night. I am on my way to an art gallery in South Wales where a friend of mine has an exhibition. Night has fallen. I stare out of the window.
Room with a View
I got a room with a view
of the moon last night.
True, there were other lights out there –
the world’s sad traffic
panning across the ceiling,
that bluish ambience glowing
out of the lazy beat of the bar,
and someone lit a cigarette
behind a truck by the chain-link fence.
But it was the moon
with its monolithic stare
that would not look away
that drove me crazy
that drove me crazy.
The moon-crazed mind can find rooms like this melancholy locations. How did we come to be here? Who might we have been with? Where are we going? Another song from ‘Wildflowers’…
And the days went by like paper in the wind
Everything changed, then changed again
It’s hard to find a friend
It’s hard to find a friend
Later, after I had found a friend at the art gallery, I wrote this poem.
Patience
I shuffle a deck in the Travelodge,
spread it out on the coverlet,
one by one by one
like the miles beneath my wheels.
It has come down to this:
a wide view of a car park,
the coral glow of the petrol-station,
a TV clamped to the wall
and cartoons at daybreak.
Someone in the next room
turning a tap on.
I think of the distance between us,
and skies when the light is going.
At the bedside are marigolds
in a glass vase.
I like their fabric shine,
the way they will not wilt,
their bright, unfailing colours.
*
My earliest memory rises again, but it has changed. Morning light, and the boy has turned away…..he is looking at the reflection of a daffodil in the pool.
