Poem: Holy Hay

Holy Hay

I didn’t have a chance to show you
the sainfoin I sowed back in May,
remembering our holiday in Spain
where we kept seeing it in bloom
by the road and on waste ground, covering
whole hillsides, great cerise stains
of what we later learned was Holy Hay.
Back here I bought some and spread it, watching
as seedlings appeared, unfurled nodding leaflets
in the rough and roguing wind and rain.
Maybe it was the wet, or the rabbits;
whatever, just one made it through to flower,
when each closed and softly bristled brush became
a clump of rosy Jagger lips. Yet I remember

wrongly: it wasn’t Spain, it was Sicily,
and maybe what we saw was Sulla,
Italian sainfoin, a deeper red colour,
but its name would never stick with me;
not like Holy Hay, coumarin still drifting
from an early mowing, with vetch and clovers,
sweet vernal grass, sown by an unseen other
who disappeared with the passing spring.
That’s why I tried it in our garden,
feeling it somehow sacred, so it might recover
the past; seeing it there you would laugh and
I would find in that perennial trait
passed down from your dear, faithful father
a way back to those fertile fields of grace.

Feature Image: Flowers of Hedysarum coronarium at the Jardin des Plantes, Paris