A Magic Memory

When I was very little,
with baby-magic power,
I took my favourite teddy bear
and climbed inside a flower.

The flower was just one inch across,
a late September bloom.
We scrambled up from leaf to leaf
to reach the petalled room.

A butterfly tried hard to land,
sucked nectar from our hair.
We quickly left our flowery perch,
it gave us such a scare.

I'm sure I must have cried and called
and shouted for my mum.
But she, who hadn't shrunk like me
to smaller than her thumb,

cannot have heard my voice at all,
and surely never knew
the magic power of tiny tots -
a phase we're quickly through.

And now it's hard to credit
that once, so long ago,
I climbed inside a flower
with my teddy bear in tow.

© Celia Warren 2019

This little stem of clematis flowers - none more than an inch across - was a casualty of my pruning and dead-heading, so I stuck it in water, where the flowers have been slowly and happily opening. So today I had a play with my new tinies and wrote the ditty above to accompany the photo. Subconsciously, it may have been inspired by P L Travers' book, Mary Poppins, where the twin babies have magic powers that they grow out of - talking with the birds was one, I remember - in a chapter of their own called John and Barbara's Story (not included in the film of the book). It's a lovely notion and almost plausible. As toddlers, we'd soon learn to disguise special gifts once we learned what was 'normal', wouldn't we!

PS Although the little figure looks superimposed (or it does to me), it was balanced inside the flower. In fact, it's still there - I'd better rescue it and put it away for another day.