THE BARTERED EARTH


She leans against evening light
clasping her plaited basket
on an arm elbow-perpendicular.
Corms lie on wattle
with stiff secateurs.
With will for Zimmer frame,
she advances under the rose arbour
overcome by its exuberance.
For a moment she snips wisps of brier,
machete-slashes a jungle path
through air heavy with blossoms
curling and sweet,
kris-crosses bosses
of ageing petal
that slip in her midwife's basket,
ripely dead.
Beneath the pergola thorns
comb wild wisps of hair,
white for surrender.

The herbaceous border receives her.
She bends, inspecting dry earth
with her trowel,
buries a corm and prays at its funeral:

'I too was planted in your soil,
a snip of a girl safety-pinned in pinafore
and black worsted stockings
riding high on the apple tree swing,
meeting the sky.
My parents and theirs
have made you mine.
I would like to think this garden
might be my daughter's and hers.'

Amenless prayer,
desire without hope.
Hear the last daughter of the garden
where her family had thought to have found
final rest.
When will is no longer enough,
when, incontinent or forgetful,
she can no longer bury
next year's summer with her trowel,
Social Services will plant her in a Home
costing everything.