Bloody Cranesbill
As if it were not purple enough, cranesbill
Argues itself alive, more purple
For its damp, delicious green, more green for its purple –
Magenta, then, against the sward and the elemental
Windswept blue, an argument of pigment,
The Sun’s violence firing the factories of its cells,
A contradiction – flimsy-tenacious, its petals
Purple against bird’s foot trefoil, the furious yellow ragwort,
A delicate, particular dissonance, harmonic at scale
With skylark and meadow pipit, bloody cranesbill
Splits whiteness into sweetness; then, colouring it visible
For moth and fly and gnat, spins birdsong from sunlight
And, like the hawkbit, borrows a bird’s name.
Katrina Porteous is a poet inspired by the lives, language and ecology of England’s wild Northumberland Coast. Read more.
“Bloody Cranesbill” reprinted from Rhizodont by Katrina Porteous (Bloodaxe, 2024).