A Poem For July

Daisy Chain

Amid buttercups and daisies, there I sat
in summer grass and made a daisy chain,
my first, aged four, all eagerness, once taught,
to link the little flowers. I see again
that meadow somewhere deep in Warwickshire,
my mother with her dreamy hazel eyes,
contented, sitting separate but near,
I concentrating on my enterprise.
And when she judged it long enough, she did
the tricky job of joining end to end,
then placed it, coronet, upon my head
and with her Brownie box preserved me, crowned.
Unbidden, half forgotten, these thoughts rise
of mother, daisies, learning, childhood skies.

Dorothy Pope