Willowherb In Words

Exploring last year's notebook, the one I was writing in before G died, I find in July I was adoring the willow herb in its prime....

It's the willowherb again and again
calling to my eye - tall, in serried ranks
marching up railway embankments and hillsides
as if guarding something with its tall green army,
its pink flowers pointing to the sky
each floret slowly opening out of a small pink finger
layer by layer, each of which will wither, fade, fall,
give way to the seeds carried in white fluff
which in three or four weeks will be blowing
about everywhere, looking for places
to sow itself and build next year's army
and then and then and then there'll be the glory
of all the leaves slowly slowly dying in shades
of red and gold, marvelous demise over weeks,
all the way into November, last year glowing
in the fog of my fiftieth birthday.

And in August

Is it the height of the rose bay willowherb
or the sheer quantity, the tall ranks of slender
individual plants making a mass of green
and pale purple now against the hillside
as it stretches up towards the tops?
There is something of the invading army
or the defending army, keeping out something worse
that might invade, colonising great stretches of railway embankment,
great swathes of verge beside lanes and paths,
thin and tall, the light filtering between the stems,
a blur of purple flowers as the train
moves fast past where they have climbed
to the top of the cutting.
And one by one the flowers will drop to leave
fine pinkish red fingers pointing upwards
each of which will in time open to release
the cotton wool tufts carrying the seeds
to be blown to another patch where
they can begin again.