Soft Peach Rose (Rev.) 14 July 2009 Poem by Margaret Alice

Went to buy a birthday card
returned instead with imitation
flowers for my computer, a bright
pink tulip, a soft peach rose

look at my squatter camp office,
flowers swaying in the air-con
breeze, needing only verse
enhancing idyll atmosphere

Romance sustaining me while
transcribing agriculture in Burkina
Faso – my progress so slow I will
be here a hundred years

every moment feels a week in bed
nightmares torture my soul when I
remember this boring tract of
husbandry and geology