Member-only story
Spring’s Votive Offerings
A poem to the flowers and my love
I was walking along the footpath that leads to the train station after work and enjoying the crocuses and daffodils beneath the hedges. I wondered how I could describe them to my fiancée and the following poem came into my head. It feels like a voice from an older time, with its rhyming couplets and alternating rhyme (the original draft rhymed “amaryllis” and “thrill us” but most people know the plant as a winter flower). Such a voice feels appropriate for a time that always brings certain nostalgia mixed in with its promise of new beginnings.
Gather round, I’ve a tale to tell
Of Spring’s hypnotic floral spell
How Earth, emerging from her Winter’s Dream
Is changing, in this time between
When days, though cold, begin to warm
And like the breaking of this new year’s dawn
Celandine, snowdrop, daffodil,
Each offer their aubade and the thrill
Of tender lights beneath each hedgerow
Which glow with green as fresh leaves sprout and grow
These neon buds, loud bleating lambs,
These votive blossoms are each a token.
Whatever weighs on you, what schemes and plans,
Know the nation’s vernal spell is yet unbroken.
Conor Whelan is a poet, storyteller, actor and teacher from Bristol, UK. He was Bard of Bath 2019–20 and celebrated its city, places and things. He loves walks in nature, which are one of his main sources of inspiration. He also believes in and writes about the latent potential of the human spirit.
