lucie

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Lucy

Visiting the house, we found you there,
Cutting back the old viburnum trees.
Gently smiling, puffing your cigar,
You sized us up across the raspberries.
We bought your garden; thinking we might suit,
You came each week to help us tie our canes
And teach us secrets about runner beans.
Though patient with our stumbles, you would burn
With sudden anger when we harmed a root
Or pruned too far: you wanted us to learn.

One day, we go to find you in a place
With no soil underfoot: a bed, a chair,
And you, with shrunken arms and beaming face,
And plastic tubes, and soft swan-feather hair.
We talk about the dog, about your book,
About a pretty beach we found in Wales,
You laugh at stories of my gaffes with girls.
A leafless silence; pale September sun.
You ask us if we’ve trimmed the hedges back,
And how the apple trees are getting on.

Winter now. I hurry though the town
And chance to see a wall plant’s patient curve,
A plant whose name and feel you would have known.
I think of how the garden that you gave
So many summers will not miss your touch,
Nor care that you have gone away. But we,
Always inclined to continuity,
May sometimes hear your gruff admonishing,
Behind the yewtree, by the cabbage patch,
When you blossom blue and yellow in the spring.