Many old European homes had keeps, food-storage rooms located off the kitchen. The meadow keep was for drying the family’s culinary and medicinal herbs and flowers.
Author and herbalist Elizabeth C. Burgess wrote Meadow Keep full of gardening poems in honor of these fragrant storage rooms. Her book is filled with delightful poems, each exploring the use of an herb. In our GreenPrints Issue #102, we were granted permission to re-publish some of her gardening poems, one of which we are sharing here today called Thyme.
What I love about this gardening poem, is that the ode to Thyme is not a depiction of its fragrance, colors, or the way it sways in the breeze or climbs over soil and rocks. Instead, it’s imagined in a cup of tea, fit to cure melancholy and betrayal.
When I grow thyme, I think of a roasted chicken, or a fragrant garnish, so seeing it pictured as a source of soothing comfort was refreshing to me. I hope you enjoy this gardening poem as much as I did!
Download our FREEBIE, GreenPrints Sampler: Gardening Humor today and get stories that highlight the silly side of gardening, giving you a chance to remember that gardening is always a work in progress.
A Cup of Gardening Poem Comfort
This gardening poem comes from our archive that spans over 30 years and includes more than 130 magazine issues of GreenPrints. Pieces like these that inject the joy of gardening into everyday life lessons always brighten up my day, and I hope it does for you as well. Enjoy!
Thyme
Thymus vulgaris
Elizabeth C. Burgess
A young Roman girl
wrought with melancholy
over the departure
of her handsome warrior
cried with total abandonment
in the backyard of her villa.
Her neighbor, hearing her wails
peered over the connecting
courtyard fence and said,
“There girl, this melancholy
needs my grandmother’s cure.
I will steep the delicate
leaves and flowers of thyme
and make a soothing tea.
We will drink it together
since my husband
has run off
with my youngest sister!” ❖
Did you enjoy this gardening poem? What are your favorite herbal poems?
Download our FREEBIE, GreenPrints Sampler: Gardening Humor today and get stories that highlight the silly side of gardening, giving you a chance to remember that gardening is always a work in progress.
Elizabeth C. Burgess’s poem, Thyme, touched my heart. If GreenPrints is where such refreshingly wholesome poems are published, I shall be visiting this site very often.Thank you.