BY ANY OTHER NAME

 For Sandra Lewis

We were unsure where to put the Christmas Rose,

aka hellebore niger, you brought us

this December gone. We chose, pro tem, the room

where I write, with its two long windows.

The light the north facing one lets in

is unambiguous. The other accepts

occasional sun from late mornings

to early evenings. I write in a corner

by a wall of books. With its much travelled

piano, its bodhrán missing a drumstick,

a clutch of recorders, a violin case

under the chaise longue, we call this space,

not wholly ironically, ‘The Music Room’.

Its harmonics sound through my poems.

This so-called rose – an ancient cure for madness,

a guard against evil, no more connected

particularly to Yuletide other than

it flowers as the year turns through darkness –

is, I learn, a distant buttercup. Here

its subtle beauty thrives.