It was gorse, of course
but was it furze first?
I’ll go with furze first
if only because “f” comes first
if only by one letter,
but doesn’t that make
the closeness all that much
better?
By an inch, by a nano-second
furze is first and
gorse is second.
But then, they are so close
it is almost like seeing a yellow ghost
in the sand, they both do shine —
these flowers, the shrubs with the
prickly spines,
the ones I have in mind.
But be careful.
if the first one doesn’t prick you,
the second is just one letter behind.
So, if you are in a wasted place,
as we so often are,
watch your space
the pretty prickles can’t be far.
The flowers are lovely,
but it surely is a gamble,
to tussle with such a formidable bramble.

*I came across the word “furze”
in a poem, looked it up and
it is “any spiny shrub of the genus Ulex,
of the legume family, native to the Old World,
especially U. europaeus, having rudimentary
leaves and yellow flowers and growing in
waste places and sandy soil.”
Another word for the plant is gorse.