Elderflower

the midsummer air of memory

Photo: © David Whyte

Elderflower

White amongst the deep green,
the midsummer air of memory
breathes from every blossom.

Their glimmering scented
innocence swirling
the quiet past to life.

So that rising above
the leaves and crowded faces
I see in the mind’s eye
my mother’s new elderflower
wine lifted to the light.

A pale and humble North
Country sherry that was
sappy and full in the mouth,
filling the chest with
cool green vowels
grown straight from that
familiar land
where first I walked,
then loved, then wrote.

Even in the forced
immediacy
of taste and memory,
speech is still speechless
to describe
the subtleties unmasked
by that quiet stream
on the
silenced tongue.

A clear, unspoken
and granted magic
drawn yearly
from the yeasting
bottle
in the pantry bottom.

On the lane to Hartshead
the elder trees
themselves
still live from year to year
like a bright
avenue of bridal posies
a continual celebration
of some other-worldly
marriage through which
I walk each year
on my return.

They flank my walk
through all the years
of memory
and all the summers
and fullness and
arrogant innocence
of that youthful
inheritance.

They live in me now
as they live in the world
growing and flowering
and then retreating
when I forget them
to a mere silhouette
in the chill winters
when I cannot
recall the June air
in Yorkshire.

But that scent from
the lifted glass
of my mother’s
making
is a pure memory
of summer made new

and the old faces
round the table
welcome me back,
nodding and talking
to the music
of gathering,

my mother laughing
tipsily at our
repeated
congratulation
and time stopped

by the stirred plangency
of the blossom
in the wine,
that taste overwhelming
my present
and the bottle
passed round
once more and
handed back
down the years to me.

So far away now
but for the cool
sibilant taste
of what is
gifted

through time
flowering again
in the memory

moment to present moment.


-from The House of Belonging

---