my thoughts are sometimes better expressed by others.....

The Ice Cream Man

Rum and raisin, vanilla, butterscotch, walnut, peach:
You would rhyme off the flavors. That was before
They murdered the ice-cream man on the Lisburn Road
And you bought carnations to lay outside his shop.
I named for you all the wild flowers of the Burren
I had seen in one day: thyme, valerian, loosestrife
Meadowsweet, tway blade, crowfoot, ling, angelica
Herb Robert, marjoram, cow parsley, sundew, vetch
Mountain avens, wood sage, ragged robin, stitchwort,
Yarrow, lady’s bedstraw, bind weed, bog pimpernel.

Michael Longley, poet.
1991, Gorse Fires