Seven Flowers for Midsummer

There were seven flowers and seven days
And nights, seven too, devoid of armour.
On seventh day while Lords were resting, blinking, looking the other way
I slept in euphemistic sense in bedless bowers
Uncrowned by deflowering daisies
Uncrowned by petals falling to the rhythm of he loves you not
and night skies were dark and mechanical, slick in the grease on chains round bicycles 

From there, dance backwards round the maypole to the beat of
Seven days and seven nights and do it twice
The comfort of the coupling of doubling
the softening of evening an odd.
Dance and find the day that lies there in the middle
The even night, the equinox, where light can wrap a mantle around night
And cradle it till out of kilter 

It is a day, and night, which brims in fairies
and women cults and sprites and mothers.
It is a day where girls not yet deflowered
ought to pick seven wildflowers and weave them into the tapestries of dreams,
Hex themselves to wander what it is to wonder in the dark with the next day’s love,
to wonder what it is to plant deep roots in fertile beds and grow with them
to bower and not cower at the otherness of man

Today, a day of sevens, I do not dance but wander none the less 
Pluck seven flowers from the gaps between my toes 
Find mushrooms in the folds behind my ears 
and hunt in fairy circles of lady’s mantle flowers 
for the quiet boom of an earthy pulse or seven pomegranate seeds to snack on.
The flowers in the bell-jar of my hand don’t know how gears work on a bike 
or what to cycle hell for leather from in dark shadow

I have a yearn for thread under my fingers
To weave a web through bristled legs 
and in it catch each drop of dew from the cold congealed by twilight
To camouflage the opalescence of pearled eggs 
and keep them safe in the inner vortex of my belly 
But threads go threadbare, slip and bristle 
are cut and joined by star filled fates with better tools and flowers which do not bend.

As I pick posies to alight upon tonight, I look with wariness upon the field
Avoid the noxious hemlock or foxgloved finger hiding bee 
and puzzle over names so I am sure that in my spell I skirt the love-in-idleness
That in my waking what I look upon is not pursued with souls and bellyfuls of love
But seen with bright eyes reflecting moonbeams
That dreams stay dreams and teeter from the twilight of the nightmare 

Before I sleep on breathless days I read that I must count to seven 
Inspiring it, then holding it, then pushing it outerwards three times over 
where it is life force, an equinox of vapours noxious and divine.
Tonight my breath is full of the dampness of thunderstorms 
and before I dream I weave my fingers into crosses, textured overlapping ribbons on a maypole 
So that the breaking petals that crush under my head 
might make me dream of sisters also dreaming
and not of greasy loves which grind mechanically through gears of yesterdays or tomorrow.