Buttercups in May

I’ve long wanted to write a villanelle (eg “Do not go gentle into that good night” by Dylan Thomas, or “Mad Girl’s Love Song” by Sylvia Plath). Here it is, inspired by the lovely force of nature that is  @ShamblesAndFuss on Twitter.

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Naked she sings on a hot sunny day.
The river drifts soft, slow as sluggish air.
She makes me think of buttercups in May.

Unhurried water drifts petals away.
She threads tiny blooms in her sunflower hair:
Naked she sings on a hot sunny day

A cloud of birdsong, a piping hurray,
She lies me down in fern and bedstraw.
She makes me think of buttercups in May.

Weightless with youth as new lovers we lay,
Entwining excited, breathless and bare.
Naked she sings on a hot sunny day.

Her name is long gone: lost in yesterday.
Her song, though, remains with me everywhere.
She makes me think of buttercups in May.

Decades disappear, I return to today
Through dusty years back to the photograph where
Naked she sings on a hot sunny day.
She makes me think of buttercups in May.