A Poem by Isobel Dixon

Sweet Violet

Beautiful bath-swoon, Viola odorata,
not for sleep, like lavender, but for the sense,
sense of the self, the self immersed:
bruised, veined, but whole and here

and steeped into a place of rare
discovery, scent-catapult, deep memory,
falling to the still core gilded
in a shaded flower’s eye.

It’s not the colour – though what purple! –
otherwise I’d love the pansies too,
but they seem garish, huge
beside the violet’s perfect modesty,

almost secretive, a tiny cluster
poised like elfen irises
above its cupping wreath of leaves,
a little finger-flare of flowers                                            

set soft against the bark,
finding its space between the roots,
the ferns, some mossy place
for you to chance upon,

and then the sweet elation
of the breath,
this earth-and-angel scent.

Isobel Dixon’s fourth collection Bearings was published by Nine Arches, who re-issued her earlier collections A Fold in the Map and The Tempest Prognosticator and will publish her next collection, The Landing. She is currently working on a new collection and collaborative project, A Whistling of Birds, loosely linked to D.H. Lawrence’s nature poetry in Birds, Beasts and Flowers.