{"id":365,"date":"2011-09-01T11:00:00","date_gmt":"2011-09-01T11:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ink.verticalplus.co.uk\/archive\/?p=365"},"modified":"2011-09-01T11:00:00","modified_gmt":"2011-09-01T11:00:00","slug":"clare-crossmans-flower-festival","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/clare-crossmans-flower-festival\/","title":{"rendered":"Clare Crossman's 'Flower Festival'"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Flower Festival<\/span>

When everything is gathered in as for an ark<\/span>
or the Last Day, I hope there\u2019ll be a place like<\/span>
this: where cultivars lean against wild flowers<\/span>
and Sweet William is arranged among green leaves.<\/span>

That red Pillar roses will climb in shade<\/span>
through, oxeye, sorrel, yellow spikes of grass<\/span>
and there are five pink sweet peas and two<\/span>
deep blue delphiniums in a jug.<\/span>

That I will know as second nature, Ladies Mantle,<\/span>
Yarrow, Elder, Poppy, the gardens where<\/span>
they grew, the hands that planted them, <\/span>
the faces who waited to walk there on warm afternoons.<\/span>

Perhaps the air will be spun with mint, lavender <\/span>
and blossom. All the agrimony remedies from<\/span>
Culpepper\u2019s book, as healing against serpents,<\/span>
temper. and augues. There may be no need for names:<\/span>

as each petal frond and stem will hold a memory<\/span>
of somewhere loved, fields and verges known<\/span>
since childhood, a wedding dance, winter goodbyes,<\/span>
the burn of autumn, a meadow in spring.<\/span>

And so collected, on cool sills, in vases <\/span>
and old jars this heavy headed lilt of summer, <\/span>
will be proclaiming laughter, our voices <\/span>
and these words:<\/span>

\u2018This is the ribbon of how we spent our days.<\/span>
This was beauty. This was good.<\/span>
This was grace.\u2019<\/span>



*Clare Crossman<\/span><\/a> has just finshed being writer in residence on Heritage Lottery finded Sharing Stories project in the village of Weston Colville.(Cambs) In March 2010 <\/span>The Shape of Us<\/span> was published by Shoestring Press Nottingham.She runs a writers workshop at The Tavern Gallery Meldreth and is working on a new collection.<\/span>

<\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Flower FestivalWhen everything is gathered in as for an arkor the Last Day, I hope there\u2019ll be a place likethis: where cultivars lean against wild flowersand Sweet William is arranged among green leaves.That red Pillar roses will climb in shadethrough, oxeye, sorrel, yellow spikes of grassand there are five pink sweet peas and twodeep […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-365","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-prose-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/365","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=365"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/365\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=365"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=365"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=365"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}