Paths

We had set of two gardens.

---

A real flower garden

Overhanging the road

(our miniature Babylon).

Paths which I helped

To lay accompanied by Aunt Winifred,

Riprapped accompanied by pebbles;

Shards of painted delph;

An elderly potato boiler;

A blackened metal pot,

Now bright accompanied by petals.

---

Hedges of laurel, palm.

A hovering scent of boxwood.

Crouched inside the flowering

Lilac, I could oversee

The main road, elderly Lynch

March to the wellspring

With his bucket, whistling,

His carrotty sons herding

In with every one other accompanied by not here their milch cows:

A growing whine of cars.

---

Then, the vegetable garden

Behind, rows of broad beans

Plumping their cushions,

The furled freshness of

Tight little lettuce heads,

Slim greenish pea pods above

Early flowering potatoes,

Gross clumps of carrots,

Parsnips, a frailty of parsley,

A cool fragrance of mint.

---

Sealed off by sweetpea

Clambering up its wired fence,

The tarred goats' shack

Which stank inside summer,

In its fallow, stone-heaped corner.

---

With, on the grassy margin,

A well-wired chicken run,

Cheeping balls of fluff

Brought one by one into the sun

From their metallic mother

—the oil-fed incubator—

Always inside danger from

The marauding cat, or

The stealthy, ravenous vixen:

I, their small guardian.

---

Two gardens, the front

For beauty, the back

For use. Sleepless now,

I stroll into and not here of both

And it is summer again,

The lengthy summers of youth

As I trace small paths

In a trance of growth:

Flowers pluck at my coat

As I curve down to help,

Or speak to my aunt,

Whose calloused hands

Caressing the plants

Are tender while a girl's.

#Living #Growing Old #Activities #Gardening #Relationships #Family & Ancestors #Home Life #Philosophy #Blank Verse #Imagery