Buttercups and Daisies

BUTTERCUPS AND DAISIES

Buttercups and Daisies.
Could a phrase be more English?
Or is it just my old Englishness making it feel that way?

I am transported to a wonderland
In which a mother
Can hold a buttercup under one's chin
And say 'Yes! You like butter!'

How magic was that!

My mother holds my hand.
Does she say 'It's Fairyland!'
Or does the thought come unbidden into my mind.
I only know that I stand there and believe.

Only Fairyland would have a little railing round it.
Inside the railing is a little park.
It must have been very little
To appear so
To six year old eyes.

Beyond is a wall……
I think.

But 'beyond' is immaterial.
Everything begins and ends in this small
Self-contained world

The yellow-white-white-yellow
Spreads like a tiny forest.
It hides small fairy creatures.

But I can't see them because I've been a 'naughty girl'.
How odd that I should only now
Remember that!

'Why can't I see the Fairies?'

'Because you've been a Naughty Girl'.

I must have continued on my naughty way
Because I never saw Santa Claus either.
And I never saw any other Venerable Mystic Personage, for that matter.
I have grown up
A comprehensive
Non-Believer.

But when, in this so-different land,
I see paddocks, far away, vaguely resembling
Fields of
Buttercups and Daisies,
'My heart leaps up'.

For a brief moment,
I feel those half-forgotten emotions.

I remember what it feels like to believe.