Planting Bulbs. (A Poem in Four Sections).

                                1

I slice open the summer hardness with a steel spade
Breaking through a scattering of stones and soil
Compressed into slabs more solid than flat rock.
The work is so tough that frequent rests are needed
Between the bouts of shoulder grinding spade work,
Hands raw, my back curved into a shallow C.

I stop to take a drink, and then another.
The flask you filled for me is almost dry.

                               2

Preliminaries completed, I shove a sack load of early bulbs
Deep into the swart earth, punching all down to no set order
With trowel and gnarled thumb. I pause to recollect
A decade of Springtime mornings in this our garden,
This discreet North London sanctuary, well hidden from
the neighbours. Here winters are usually drab, a miserable
inconvenience. I look forward to an abundance of loveliness.

                               3

Well that is enough hard grafting.
I put the kettle on the hob
And take time out for a sandwich.

Then the phone rings and rings.
You terrified in the surgery.

The cost of that IVF treatment 
Is completely beyond all reason. 
The doctor`s concern is the money, 
Not our welfare. 

Nor the child`s, no doubt.

I drop the phone on the step
and start to cut back the roses.-
Love is too often beyond our means,
Even you must see that. 

                          4

Quietly melancholic in this downturn of the year,
I sit and stare at the dun tilth. Maybe that doctor will find
The time to contact me, or then, more likely, not. Gardening
tools lie scattered over the patio, discarded bits and pieces
dropped by a desolate child. Without much interest I watch
An angle of shadow decline in steep slow motion
Across the irregular curve of the garden wall.

With one disaster digging out another 
It will take a good seven years to pay back that loan. 

The equinox provokes a distinctive shift in the weather.
I watch the steep descent of a watery sun.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
September 7th. - September 25th. 2012.
Revised March 25th. 2013.