Grasscloth

Two-weight brocatelle. Historic plaited gold.

A wide-looming lea. A no seamed sea.

Raised, ribbed, leaf-sheathed and spikeletted.

Handloomed broad-glumed brome.

Yards and yards of yellow and yellow.

Grasscloth (Millefleur)

Flatlands of irregularity.

Scroll. Littlescroll.

Trail-patterning Flora.

*

So wields the needle-

and-threaded grass, the dyer’s weld,

the thousand-flowered dye book. Wild bluebell,

bellwort, bugleweed, the ecclesiastical ding-

dong, the chime, the chintz of Sistine and Trinitas,

woven silk and cotton, poppy linen.

Under the block-printed willow bough.

Where hawthorn and hyssop collide.

A back-lit haute-lisse crashes the colorway.

Wallpaper

The walls a garland of woe. Poppy and Wreath. A wind-around of lineage and plant. Velvet and vine. Larkspur on saddened madder. Chestnut cocktail, iron acetate. Autumn rose. A ghost of acanthus.

William Morris in His Disappointment Garden

Damp-squib grammar of pretty things and wild mignonette.

Quercitron bark. Old fustic’s persistently pissy stamen,

the peony-stained wallpaper. Despite the conspicuous hot spots,

sun, chrysanthemum, coreopsis, yellow’s a letdown nevertheless.

The repeating motifs? Killers. Jasmine twill, jasmine trellis …

Trifoliate moth-traps these wool and cotton undersellers.

Envisage Little Chintz or Corncockle (where the flower plays

but a minor part), or an indigo-discharged rose. And the bugs!

Kermes, cochineal. A scuffle of ripe and ruin among rosebud

and campion, columbine and vine. So heartsunk am I of tusser silk

and cotton velveteen. Fuffling if nothing this art of color or perish.

Lacking compassion for lac-dye and up to the elbows in vermillion

melodrama … I’m dyeing, I’m dyeing …

Floral Correspondences

Nature must prick us with her courages also.

— Vita Sackville-West

Frost and snow. Our poor garden.

— Harold Nicolson

milkweed/fern-leaf golden elderberry

My Darling,

A disagreement of winter and spring and I refuse to be disconsolate. Light incurs ice. Suns sink on suns. My jottings of flowers crush the last chilly flourishes (plots and plots of ideas!). I am flush with anticipation. (You in all my notes to self.)

—V.

Dear,

I imagine everything in full fig.

Dug up and dragged.

The stone coping.

The windows’ weepy wails.

Under your gumboots a grumbling of over-the-top bulbs.

Pale noses yet to surface.

Slug bait at the ready.

The ground rumbling.

—H.

My Dear Love,

Mad March dreams

of crane flowers,

birds of paradise.

Strelitzia reginae a deft cut

of bird and flower.

Sunbirds perch and powder

their breasts with pollen—

pollinators who sail the seasons.

(A rare plant who prefers birds over insects

am I.)

—V.

My Dear,

Haphazard jottings.

A lawn of daffodils.

A waterlogged orchard.

A union of heat and damp.

A lone osmanthus, white-clustered, apricot-smelling.

Balsam poplar takes me by the nose.

What endures?

Viburnum in full flower.

Recklessly planted corners.

My faith in deadheading.

—V.

My Darling,

The threat of frost supplanted by a dummy run of white and grey.

I’m scheming lavender, clematis, primrose. A corner of lilies and camellias. A low feast of grey foliage. Artemisia and cotton lavender.

A high yew hedge. Grey and white edging: Rabbits’ Ears, Savior’s Flannel.