From “Worcester: The Canal” in Under the Cliff and Other Poems by Geoffrey Grigson:
The autumn daisies dipped in the wind
In the olive water,
Oil patches, like a marbled fly-leaf,
Turned in the wind, on the water.
A swan; and the black, elegant bridge,
Like a theorem, over
The canal and the towpath: a circle
Over an arch, by a great arch.
And a black engine on the bridge, named
As a Princess, smoking. Rusty
Galvanised over the coffin yard,
A man passing with leeks….
Hello!
This is the third of three posts with photographs of Persian (or Painted) Daisies (Tanacetum coccineum) and mums (Chrysanthemum zawadzkii). The first post — where I also wrote about the significance of mums and daisies at Victorian garden cemeteries — is Pink Daisies, Pink Mums (1 of 3); and the second post is Pink Daisies, Pink Mums (2 of 3).
Here we are on the last day of November (how did THAT happen?), right on the cusp of starting the month of curiosities and baubles, clouds of glitter, and the lights and candles we use to ward off winter darkness. For my part, I’ve engaged the services of my decorating assistant — The Small Dog — who supervised the work yesterday as I untangled the first of two strings of 900 (three sets of 300 each) lights and began shoving them into the Christmas tree. You can just barely see his head peaking around the wall in the first image, but the more I swore at the lights to encourage them to straighten out, the more interested he got!
