Frances
It is as if your hair was wound with regret
and you dressed in changeable taffeta
holding heartsease and singing descant
by the ornamental lettuce. Sweet coz
who else guesses the quartz in your heart
or a dance practiced at midnight
to Cliff Richard’s Christmas songs?
It is no-one but us knows everything to do
with exquisite deceit and its taste,
of black currant pilfered from under the leaf
and a sugary chrysalis and imminent death
frames this picture in a dark and rosemary memory.
Katherine Liddy