Of our times and tulips
Squirrels have beheaded all my parrot tulips
and the supermarket is out of chilli, also tabasco sauce.
At the zebra crossing an SUV hurls a diesel glazed puddle
into my boots and the rain stings my eyes,
breaches the seams of my mac.
This is just how Al Gore said it would be I used to tell my friend.
She said he was full of himself and statistics were fickle,
would lie down for any passing fad.
The last time we were together Storm Jocelyn was rampaging
down Euston Road and we had to wring out our jeans
in the toilets at Kings Cross.
She was a Kathleen as the next storm will be.
Peppermint oil is another thing squirrels do not like, she told me;
also if you trap a squirrel you have to kill it,
so her husband got an air rifle.
In Imperial China my grandfather photographed a small brick tower on a hill.
Reported live man bricked round in small tower
in his meticulous copperplate on the reverse.
We will have annihilated ourselves within a century
it is reported.
I buy white vinegar and cinnamon and next Spring there will be parrot tulips.
Sue Butler was a convent educated Catholic then a GP. She started to write, to find out what happened, the burden, the pain, the privilege, the intimacy of it all. Her pamphlet Learning from the Body is published by Yaffle.