In a Book of Days

In a Book of Days

today has wisteria wound across the fence,

first petals unfurled

tiny terracotta clover leaves crept like strawberries

scattering yellow stars between the cracks, softening the slabs

and moss

a waft of lilac, tamarisk fronds emerging,

a bleeding heart somehow survived, now dwarfed,

honesty bright purple, ceonothus shot too high

the best of blues,

weeds ( potential poppies) spared among the stones

a blackbird singing invisible

and Betty chirruping

inventing her dear self.

18th April 2013, Hounoux

Even in the long view

As luck would have it, year of birth, class

and grammar school, each fall of the letters scrabbled with felicity

serendipity, so here’s a house, a garden, pool,

a cultivated life

some years spent nurturing

small hands warm in mine, measured on the wall, marked

fed not forced good books, good manners

as sunflowers stretch towards the sun.

House: walls painted, repainted, soft-furnished, re-arranged

packed in boxes, shipped abroad

pottery in shapeless lumps tissue-wrapped with care

these things saved, selected

those things not.

And after all the choosing/ cherishing, honing house into a home

down decades tear and wear

a brass lamp’s bloomed, children have grown apart and some so dear-beloved

now are gone.

Still taking one thing with another, plus the long view

looking back

oh it’s hard to make a judgement

give a grade, evaluate

for a lifetime’s worth of choices

even in the long-view, hindsight, twenty-twenty

looking back.

June 10th 2013, Hounoux