Hannah's Peony - a poem

Next to the front door at Hannah's lake cottage was a spectacular peony. After she died and before the cottage was sold, I dug up part of the plant and moved it to the garden of my Czech home, where it flourished. I was unable to take the plant with me to England, when I moved back, so have bought a similar one in memory of her - not quite the same, but the best I can do.

Here's a poem I wrote on the subject. It was first published in Dawntreader magazine (Indigo Dreams).

Hannah’s Peony. 

By the tumble of stones the peony
too red to be natural, too bloody
to be anything but
a token of things to come, and yet of itself
a now thing
bursting into flowered song
 
each petal a note
until they fall, stripped by rain
or just exhaustion,
the quick decline of the perfect,
and helmeted seed heads stand instead
until they too must bend to the seasons.
 
How it had blazed, asking
for nothing but a place in the earth.
 
When you died I dug up a piece of you –
this flower too bright to live –
planted it by the ruined woodshed,
surrounded it with stakes
to protect against the deer’s rough tongue.
 
And so each year this witch flower
burns again.