Daffodil

Down in Dymock, on the red clay of Severn Vale,

the daffodils packed in boxes went to London on

the train and poets went to War. Neither came back.

They say a shell passed so close to Edward Thomas's

heart it stopped. When he walked the yellow wood*

did he ever have an inkling such a thing could happen,

that the power of something passing could kill you?

Don't stand too close to the railway line or step beyond

the daffodils at wood's edge.

* 'Two roads diverged in a yellow wood / And sorry I could not travel both, ' Robert Frost, 'The Road Not Taken' (1916).

NB photographs do not appear in the book.

Herbaceous illustrated by Kurt Jackson