The Walled Garden
She found the plot
A full quarter of the old walled garden,
Hers to grow and prosper in.
The rest; obviously the farms,
Grew staples fuelled from the old
thunder box,
Potatoes, leaks, onions,
shallots,
Peas, broad beans, climbing
French and runners too,
Parsnip, turnip, beetroots
Good anglo saxon villein fodder.
The stuff we’d eaten through the
centuries,
Till it was too much part of us,
No surprises there,
Just dig and plant and grow,
From day to month to century
From William the Bastard’s time
To Queen Victoria and beyond
No wonder Tudors and before
Would barter woollen cloaks and
tin,
Best spun blankets ,Norfolk lace
For saffron, pepper, nutmegs
cloves,
Anything to make the taste of
parsnips go away.
Of more interest were, on south
facing walls,
Trellises of apricots and
raspberries,
Kept in trim by Ernest and his
bees,
But this was not her task,
Though sometimes she shared the
bees.
Dig and pull, weeds and couch
grass to remove,
Old pathways to discover, last
worked in Bess’s time,
The Queen that is, not
sheepdog,wall eyed and bold,
In pup again, somewhere midst the
many barns.
Guilty pleasures, pulling off her
gloves,
And burying her hands deep in the
soil.
The clod, the clay , the crumb,
Yielding to her insistant
tending,
Surrendering its weeds and
secrets,
Old clay pipe stems, broken
tiles,
A flash of glazed blue and half a
ship,
Sails in the air after many years
in mud.
Sometimes a spade is needed or a
hoe,
To loosen some intransigent weed.
And all the time she dreams she
spins
Hand in earth , in olden times
And all the time her hands begin,
To feel the warmth of new spring
time.
I decree, she begins out loud,
To an audience of sparrows,
A herb garden, with old box
hedge,
To shelter healing herbs, and
have them grow,
In order salient to their worth.
Flowers too, not just for show,
But for their oils, their sense
,their scents,
Jasmine will be the first to
grow.
She sat and thought and surmised
Her knowledge came from dribs and
drabs,
Smatterings of conversation,
Listened to when knee high ,then
not understood.
A healing garden sprung in her
mind,
Fuly formed and scented,
Mature and mature in later summer
warmth.
She breathed it it in,
And saw that it was good.
Perhaps I am witch she thought,
And flushed with pleasure at such
a thought,
Mentally making planting lists
And inside making charms.
Sunset strikes a golden chord,
And sends its rays through
western garden door,
And that is how her brothers
found her,
Enraptured, eyes closed and
singing to herself,
As the sunset seemed to strike
just her.
A blink of time and the world
moved on,
Something had changed
Her brothers saw
Two ravens bowed before her feet
And also wolf’s soft paws.
“Happy then ?”
Ernest’s understatement did not
break the mood,
Neither did Wolf, though he
bounded up and licked her face,
Mine to grow and prosper in, she
breathed,
Am I the Valley’s witch ?
What kind of question’s that ?
Came brother’s terse reply,
“if you gotta even ask…”
Two Ravens, Brother, sister and a
wolf
All went in for tea
Now equal in their majesty.
No comments:
Post a Comment