I think I’ve commented that maybe my ‘spotlight’ series is not the most original title for a series of highlights, so I was thinking of retitling it. I thought of a necklace of poems, then maybe ‘jewelry box’. But again these seemed a bit standard. I had an idea of a daisy chain and that led me to look up the Hawaian Lei’s (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lei_%28garland%29) — beautiful and given for such good reasons, peace and love amongst them. But I’m a European and we’ve stolen or approriated enough of others’ cultures, Lei’s are of flowers, I hesitated. I thought just of a garland. Then I thought of reading Eric Fromm’s ‘To Have or To Be’ and his pointing out the difference between admiring a flower growing and of plucking it, killing it, and differing philosophies and writers on this. And this is not a criticism of the beautiful Hawaian tradition, but I’ve decided to try and reflect flowers growing as my treasure trove – so a herbaceous border, beautiful and made up of many perennials. I’m tempted to got a step further and call them a wild flower meadow, but that may be an arrogance too far, and they are being cultivated, collected and presented in a garden type order, so Herbaceous Border it is. I’m starting it off by planting a favourite of mine, or replanting it, from it’s pot spotlight.

Oh and I now see that in the USA you’d call this a perennial border – so I like herbaceous even more as more particular.

This haiku came from simply playing with an idea of what poems can do for me and gave a wonderful gift when after getting the final line I saw I could go back and think ‘of course!’ and change what i had (‘searched’ i think) to ‘fished’, a good feeling. And an appropriate way to start off this border of poems

i fished for a word
to set my world in order
stopped still, heard water

A. H (April 2018)

Maybe it is also in line with that eastern philosophy Fromm highlighted in discussing not plucking the flower.

For now still my primitive computer graphic — I will try drawing it by hand one day, maybe soon.

And for the first featured image a recent(ish) photo of a survivor of an old herbaceous border I knew.