The air is thick with ghouls and gunpowder.
Scour the scruffy verges, the rash of nettles, 
rampage of brambles, the carpet of creeping ivy.
Gather an armful of honesty.

Peel each dirty husk; reveal the gleaming, inner disks.
It’s finicky: loath to relinquish their tough coats, 
some seedpods rip.  As with the bent stalks
and wizened leaves, snip them.

Now the blue vase holds a poem—a bouquet of moons. 
Another—of husks and stalks and torn pods—
fissles across the floor. And how many more 
might the dark seeds in your cupped palms hold?

Dilys Rose

Dilys Rose is a fiction writer and poet who lives in Edinburgh, who currently divides her time between writing and printmaking. Her fourth collection of poetry, Memory Foam, is due out later in 2024. https://www.dilysrose.com

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