A Poem Grown In The Dark, August 2020

In autumn before-times
My plan was to keep
My hyacinth bulbs, left
In darkness to sleep.

In springtime, in lockdown,
I set the bulbs free.
To my horror, my plants
Had been following me.

They could not be contained.
They had been locked away
Without water or light
And had grown anyway.

Brown and stringy, the leaves
Had attempted to stretch
To the light, to the air,
To their home window ledge.

The hyacinth shoots
Would continue to grow
Through the spring, and the summer,
And through them I know

That I can create
Even when the world ends.
This poem can live
Even when the lines bend

And the rhymes won’t come quick
And the metre’s all wrong.
A life can be lived
When the story or song

Is not quite perfection.
It’s life all the same.
The leaves and the shoots
Can be raised without shame.

I attend to these words
And I fuck them up gladly.
If something’s worth doing
It’s worth doing badly.

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