I like hedges long, short, slim, wide
Curving round bends on ends
It has to be Privet, smells divine
Like a strange type of wine.

Outside mansions or on council estates
Scruffy and woody where leaves flake
Cut into chickens or kangaroo topiary
Covered in Christmas lights at night.

I just love Hedges.

Love Mary **

I dangle like the Willow tree
Few of leaf and spiralling
The dance of the finalists
Caught in Winter sneeze.

So much beauty holds on
Asters like gold buttons
Scarlet hollyhock flower
So swished by rain drops.

Of Purple leaf cherry plum
Bringing Spring’s first blossom
Branches brushed in white
Against a colbalt cold sky.

Love Mary ***

Lime green light
Shines softly through the breaks
As each bush stalks into day
Walking the wilderness road
Distilled morning moves the sun
Under a diagonal sprayed sky.

There is a mystery here to make
Taken along telegraph lines
Colours carried across space
White wistful clouds
Rise up towards the majestic
Mauveness and morning awakes.

Love Mary ***

A single tree against a blue sky
A single tree
That is Me.


Love Mary ***

Shades of green and a lichen fence
Leafless bushes embrace telegraph
Triangular factory roofs make hills
In the patch of lavender’s sunshine.

And two paths, worn grass journey
Of favourite places returning home
Break into the emerald field of love
Where our walking brings strength.


Love Mary ***

A road of palest lime fluttering Sycamore trees
Some almost leafless, others coronets still there
Through the golden branches colbalt blue skies
Lilac bushes, the garden daisies, flower in rows.

Thinning Robinna casts shadows of dim shade
Contrasting the red Acer’s lace leaf with green
The trunk arch of handkerchief laden Foxglove
Holds open its beautiful boughs to be admired.

For Autumn spreads my walk in glorious glitter
Though the evening pulls in the coldness of year
Making the best of these last savages of seasons
Gathering leavings, the birdtable spills its seeds.

Love Mary ***

See branch oh cherry blossom ripe
Below Payne’s haunted sky of grey
In mornings rain dripped clouds on high
The pink now wetted held to bough.

Love Mary x

In May the tree has liliaceous buds
And places at the tips a flower
With fluted candelabra frills
To light the wake time evening hours
A touch so close to kiss the sky
And violet bright against the blue.

Love Mary **

They dipped in Serpentine with shoes
The leaves of Autumn sail side up
And children, four, remember now
In pleasure, wind swept, hair filled days.

Love Mary xxxx

Picking icicles from window
Sharp and cold under cut nail
And wetness into cuff of dress
With water in stains on wall.

Each breath a melt and flow
Drips as metamorphosis go
The sky a heavenly promise
Of snowflight by nightfall.

Love Mary x

I laid them on the old brick wall
Those many coloured hollyhocks
Their heads now cracked and open
Their stems brown and dried.

And as they pass, the friends of mine,
Gather in their gardener’s hands
What next year will begin to grow
The following year stand tall.

Love Mary ***

Today the Summer lets go of its hold
Dripping rain drops from the trees
Swaying its closure of green growth
The tips of the Acer turning reddish.

The dance of ends splits my heart
Leaving sarratteted round its edge
Autumn’s promise of golden days
The Foxglove leaf a fallen emblem.

Love Mary

And so they cluster frilly spinning dancers
Across the Autumn stage
Yellow centred bodices
The lilac, white and cerise petals
Of Michaelmas Daisy remembered
Each year flowering for us always.

Love Mary x