Botanizing

William Austin in Flora
Londinensis described “such
plants as grow wild in London”—
finding water-violets in a ditch
on the right-hand side of the field way
leading from Kent Road to Peckham,
“blinks” on Hampstead Heath, vinca
minor in a Dulwich field hedge,
danewort scattered on Lambert Marsh,
and fritillary in meadows
somewhere “betwixt Mortlake and Kew.”

Pawing through this eighteenth century
catalogue of flowers I stall
over “corn-cockles,” “succory,”
and “pellitory of the wall,”
plants I never identified
while botanizing through North and
Steeple Aston, hoping to escape
the rage of the little cottage
two disconsolate couples
shared with adulterous glee.

I should have stayed home to study
the Anglo-Saxon poetry
in which I wanted expertise,
but spring flowers percolated
in the pastures and meadows,
the Cherwell gargled in its ditch,
and the bluff heads of beef cattle
looked on with genuine interest
as I prowled the public rights-of-way.

I identified “traveler’s joy”
and “old man’s beard,” celandine,
hogweed, and wood anemone,
and only crept home when too late
for the usual tea-time quarrels,
the faces of the participants
flushed and bright as rugosa
and almost as smugly enthorned.