Iceland Poppies

Restrained

I, born of the title of

Virginia Woolf’s sister

Mourn the passing of my paintings in the privacy of this new home

No. 8 Fitzroy Sq. bombed last night – art the only fatality

Clustered, cloistered, perhaps, by other people’s things

Second hand. The generosity of others is not unwelcome

But,

the task at hand to make of them her own, is, in itself, an art form

After all, one can always paint more paintings

Retrained

The poppies remained.

Iceland poppies.

How apt that death survives 

Now hangs in the corner of the back room.

Charleston

Next to the fireplace, where this life steps outside

Removes itself from the concentric circles of a particular triangle

A Sussex Bloomsbury

Welcomes and becomes, in itself

A new life, underlined,

with a sisters full stop.

Reborn

She outlives

But never outdoes

Plants a garden of poppies,

of cotton lavender, lupins and iris

This garden, her garden,

a formal layout with unruly plantings

Where each year,

She saves the circular nut, and seed

From the wisteria, who, once bloomed

Once purple now pulp-brown

Knocks one last time against her bedroom window

This wind, in grey circles, hits the house

And takes her, finally, with it.