There is at once a sense of gentle celebration and elegy in Sheila Templeton’s poem about the butterfly-attracting shrub of high summer. The piece comes from Gaitherin, her impressive recent collection in English and Scots (Red Squirrel Press, £10).

    PURPLE LIKE BORAGE

I slipped out after the rain stopped

to walk by the river. Along its bank

the bushes tall, green-thickened,

arching a cathedral in the drenched air.

~

And blossom, purple tasseled pennants

smelling of faint honeysuckle.

The name lost.

~

But I remember you loved it,

waited every year for its long plumes to open,

waited for the butterflies.

~

Borage? No, that’s blue.

And borage is for bees. Its furry grey-green leaves

belong in frosted glasses on a summer table.

~

Why didn’t you garden anymore?

You used to love it so.

~

And this was your favourite.

You grew it by the gate - not skyward

like these – but pruned, tended, fat -

confettied in butterflies, bursting with life.

~

All gone now.

~

Buddleia. Budd-le-ia.

~

Like a prayer lost on the wind.