Woodbine
Our honeysuckle’s broken loose,
hangs free of the wall,
sends out suckers and side shoots
rooting itself where it chooses;
lonicera, common woodbine,
no-one knows why it twines clockwise;
but cut back hard to the woody stem
its questing tips probe out again
spiral round a fence or gate;of all our plants
the most tenacious – it flowers twice
a pink and cream mass of blooms;
the bees in it loud all this June,
night flying moths drawn by its perfume.
Jo Haslam lives and works in West Yorkshire. Her poem, Wish, won joint second prize in the National Poetry Competition 2010. Her new collection On the Kiso Road published by Templar will be out in November 2012.
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