Snowdrops by Diane Jackman

No one living knows

who planted them,

dug the first clump

from a cottage garden.

A marker in the absence of a headstone.

Did become a custom

for the poor, source

of the snowy river flowing

round the ruined church?

Left to themselves they have cross-bred.

Unmindful of species,

green spots and splashes

stripes and picots paint

the muddle of white petals.

Each one a February candle for a buried soul.

Diane Jackman’s poetry has appeared in The Rialto, snakeskin, optimum, Elbow Room, Spillway, small press anthologies, and won several competitions.  She runs a small poetry group in The Brecks, a fascinating sandy heath landscape regarded as England's desert.