Bluebells in Daglingworth Grove

Poetry
Written By Philip Rush
 

The closer anyone looks

the harder.

The wood is a mirage

skirted with blues,

eye-shadowed, sky-shadowed, 

bedazzled

and inflorescent. Faint tinklings. 

A pause


is required. 

A fermata’s marked in the score

of the walk. 

It holds the unresolved cadence

of the short climb, 

the new green of wheat.

Look up and the magic’s gone, 

a drizzly


old breeze, 

the narrow thunder of a plane

behind the curtain clouds. 

Look back, down 

the steep pitch of the hanger, 

the taffeta


blue of the trees.

Secret as a charm

spoken, 

sacred as a charm sprinkled

into the soil

like flakes of summer sky.


Once you catch a bluebell, 

it is no longer

a bluebell. 

In close-up 3D it becomes

a specimen. 

If you look at them

in a certain kind of way, 

the bluebells, 


you can remember

childhood spinneys

where they grew in crowds

and gatherings

and where once upon a time 

with your head

to one side

and without paying precise


attention, 

you used to see the sea,

a pool or an inlet 

resting at slack tide, 

maybe shivering a bit, 

or a painting


of the sea, 

secret as a charm spoken, 

sacred and calm 

as a charm sprinkled 

into the soil 

like flakes of summer sky.

 
Philip Rush

Philip Rush was born in Middlesex but has lived most of his life in Stroud in Gloucestershire. He has degrees from the universities of London and Bristol. Big Purple Garden Paintings was short-listed for the Aldeburgh First Collection Prize; subsequent booklets include Punk; Steep Paths and the Smell of Guitars, and Light Wood Dark. For several years, he has run Yew Tree Press of Stroud, which has published pamphlets from local and not-so-local poets. His most recent book of poems is Camera Obscura from The Garlic Press.

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