OLD GARDENER

• Spring —


• Sunlight scrapes the condensation
• from windows earlier each morning
• and drills eyes awake.


• Timpani of sparrows and finches
• cacophony of crows and magpies
• alarm ears awake.


• Voles, shrews, young rabbits
• catapulted through the catflap
• invade the yawning house.


• I flee into the teeming garden:
• at last the fledging hawthorn hedge
• flickers green for go.


• I weed and hoe and plant and sow:
• I flex and stretch and judder and groan
• like a rusted spring.

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