Entry tags:

poetry:sonnet

I wrote this sonnet for All Souls' Day, which is today, but I wrote it on 21st July 1997 in Bunhill Fields. "Bindweed" is a name for the plant which some call morning-glory and botanists know as convolvulus.

I saw the bindweed curl about your tomb
Whereon I set a rose, now short of breath,
And marked the similarity of death
Between your chance to live, its time to bloom.
For though your maker overflowed your hours
Yet still upon your blossom climbed the weed;
You noticed but did nothing; thus its seed
Cast round the earth, and choked your budding flowers.
But brazen trumpets round its conquering green
This bindweed blossom, in the rose's stead;
Just so, before you took this rosy bed
You sometimes woke and showed what might have been.
But now your chance is gone as chances go.
I've learned your lesson. Let me find the hoe.