WHAT TEMPERAMENTAL INSTRUMENTS*

they be, these graceful as champagne flutes, 

drooping down in seemingly benign beauty – especially these—

these butter-yellow bells, their throats painted with a sprinkling 

of pale freckles. Such loveliness can conceal

lethal secrets: foxglove – known for its healing powers

is also renowned for being deadly poisonous. It grows

in an array of colours: purple, pink, white and yellow

but the defining characteristics are those pale freckles

coating their throats. 

*From Elizabeth Bachinsky’s poem At Fifteen from

the book Home of Sudden Service