jam jar

Fields painted yellow
Bright as the dresses
The girls wore to school.
Hopscotch on the dusty playground
Hands dirty and noses red.

Hare and partridge
Stand stock still in the sun
Hearts aflutter
Hoping, praying,
Then run from the blades
That behead the flowers
Like the man at the guillotine
Made a clean cut
Through the windpipe of
Marie Antoinette.

The sun mourns its loss
Shedding silent tears
Behind a covering cloud,
Then returns to nurture
The daisies and the buttercups
That litter the roadside…

He loves me
He loves me not
None of it matters
Now the sun’s come up.

Midges make murmurs
Round their ears
Catch the dragonfly in a jam jar
Capture the iridescent shimmer
With blunt colouring pencils
Just as fading photos capture
The endless numbered days
You thought would last forever.