Poetry

Meadow

We drowsed in the dappled shade, lazed like cats on our carpet of grass. The meadow was sprinkled with buttercups and poppies. You picked an ox-eye daisy, a marguerite. “Here, let’s see if you love me – or not.”  You tore off the petals one by one. I waited. Only one petal left.  “Ah now, look at that, you don’t!”

You made me a daisy chain, my milk-white crown. You gathered poppies for my bouquet. We lay under the silent oak. 

Afterwards you walked me home. I put the poppies in a vase but after a day the papery petals spilled. I never saw you again. I told myself, I didn’t miss you all that much.

Jenny Donnison