Here is midsummer.
The time of purple and orange.
Out of a Jurassic forest of foliage rise the polemonium spears.
holding aloft their beautiful-blue purple flower clusters.
While pink-purple rockets burst forth on the buddleia bush.
And Orange hawkbit waft their devil’s paintbrushes high
among the tall spears of lucifers Crosimia
and the low snaking tendrils of the nasturtium.

A frog, saved from the clutches of a cat.
A bite from an ant,an attempt to save its eggs.
Huge Fern leaves, stretching across the pond.
And seed pods, drying, rattle their wares.
Proof, if proof were needed;
Proof, as proof is needed,
that they are not just empty shells – Monsanto.
They are in fact Life itself.
Womb of creation.
A crucible of transformation
holding space for magical alchemy.

The Scratchy black cat drinks from the deep blue tub
glowering at me with yellow eyes.
My eyes slide onto the bush beside him,
the contrast of the pale underbelly of the leaves
Concealed, revealed among the darker topside of those same leaves, drinking in the sunshine.
Behind the cat stands a glass house full of carnivores
sunk into cool pools.
They stand tall and proud with open mouths and snake tongues,
Enticing their prey with glistening beads of sweet stickiness
And all manner of fantastic methods of entrapment.
Nature at its most obviously devilish, delicious, And delightful.
“Feed me, feed me now”,sings Audrey in this little house of horrors.