"Response", by Mary Ursula Bethell

[med_cat]

Response

Mary Ursula Bethell

When you wrote your letter it was April,
And you were glad that it was spring weather,
And that the sun shone out in turn with showers of rain.

I write in waning May and it is autumn,
And I am glad that my chrysanthemums
Are tied up fast to strong posts,
So that the south winds cannot beat them down.
I am glad that they are tawny coloured,
And fiery in the low west evening light.
And I am glad that one bush warbler
Still sings in the honey-scented wattle . . .

But oh, we have remembering hearts,
And we say 'How green it was in such and such an April',
And 'Such and such an autumn was very golden',
And 'Everything is for a very short time'.
~~
Poet's bio can be found here; she lived in New Zealand.

Comments

[duathir.livejournal.com]

Beautiful; thank you.

[med-cat.livejournal.com]

You're welcome; glad you liked it.

It was in the comments to one of the entries on the greatpoets comm that you'd shown me a while back, actually :)

[duathir.livejournal.com]

I must have missed it there.

[med-cat.livejournal.com]

Oh, actually, on second thought, it was linked to in one of the comments, so you hadn't actually missed it _per se_ :)