Ann’s shed

Bags of cement, rusty poles, a rook of hoes, spades and shears;

ivy growing through a crack in the door, grow bags,rolled-up carpet strips,

a Helping Hand pick-up stick, plastic sheets and bamboo canes;

Used each season that comes around, stuck in a punctured yellow bucket;

a worn-out cushion, tangled wire, a Spear & Jackson tool (I can’t describe),

three coloured and leaky watering cans;

The first summer flies, all novice, all weak: tough shadows grown long in the day; and here - a coat i should recognise;

sweet peas straggling the roof, defying a rickety trellis;

the neighbour’s cooking drifting in, another roast, another day of rest;

a jar of shells from an unremembered beach, a barking dog, one cobweb rocking

between window and frame, its threads spanning more pots than her garden would need;

And the gardener herself, bedded down in her purple room, with palliative bed,

a catheter, a morphine supply, a disease; the window always ajar ( to breathe

to breathe, to take in the last of all she would leave), listening only to birds,

to voices now, and the wind playing each individual leaf; and Ann,

still asking how everyone is, whilst softly growing her own death.

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