Adonis Blue

From The Spectator 12 June, 1993

Adonis Blue
by Beatrice Garland

Today in a field of lucerne
ninety nine butterflies flew
around in shimmying circles,
daft and dizzy and blue;

hieroglyphs for recalling
the sky on the day it was planned,
these original jottings in Quink
dashed off by a master-hand;

or bits of a torn-up letter
airmailed into the blue,
to be caught and stuck together
with brushes and pots of glue;

an extravagant issue of stamps
released on a cloudless day,
curled by the sun on a desk top,
then brilliantly blowing away.

Like falling in love without asking,
the moment was suddenly there –
lambent with possibility,
gratuitous, open, like air.