Take back the memory.
You have it.
Yet how can I give something away I don't want to be without?
Sometimes loss is the best thing.
Why does it not feel that way now?

If you knew
the games of chess
I play with you.
You would wonder why
you win so easily
whilst it is I
who loses her king
each time.

What is it like to go from white
to black,
move along the squares, the moods,
whilst I'm here wishing to go back.
Take back my faulty move, return
to those halcyon days,
toasting under the sun.

The rain should have been a sign
for those days long gone.
That our day is past, our time is through,
for not much longer would I lose you

You tear our kind away,
those pesky weeds        
                                    that stunt
your plump full seeds  -
that steal and cause decay.
You landed by fortune,
fortune of the windy chance -
you earned it. What is different is dangerous
less valued - not worth a glance.

Warm soil in-between your fingers,
You have power here in the garden,
Pulling and wrenching the stems from
home
We’re unwanted, not needed
Not useful, not beautiful,
Not enough,
                      but too much.
                                    

Strong weathered fingers grip our necks,
Trampled under steel studded boots,
We seep into the soil disappearing,
Just like you wanted us to.
Suffocating ignored as grassroots,
condemned to be always taboo.

Weeding is good, you say.
Weeding is important.
It keeps the garden healthy, comely,
presentable.
We’re the intruders, thieves!
in search for better light.
Worn down we grieve.
why do you see not our might?

A garden improved

Standing up I arch my back,
rusty and cramped.
Tiresome work removing the
unwanted.
My hands scratched and torn,
the limp bodies neatly packed,
the garden is reborn.


The flora look uniform now
no insulting dark stems,
only the long strong boughs
of rightful King Oak,

and no more of them.


But a king without his subjects is a peasant.
With our loss fades your treasured soil,
your sterling root networks anchoring your  
flowerbeds of wealth.
We are the pests,
we stole your soil,
so why does it grow grey?
You wanted growth
I heard you say.
You can’t have both.

What a nuisance.
Us or the decay?

So I am a pest, you say?
Well, to that I say, we pests always grow.
Your tulips and rose corrode,
but you reap what you sow.
No matter the hate that spits our existence,
the sharp teeth of the chainsaw or
poisonous pesticide bidding good riddance,
we are green, and life sustaining, and we are resistant.

The aim is not good riddance,
but co-existence.

Sometimes, when it seems as if the sky
and earth,
And past
and future,
are colliding,
with no horizon
to keep them apart,
I like to close my eyes,
and think of Now.

Yesterday once made up
                                         the Now,
with colours so vivid and explosive,
sounds so vibrant and patterned,
feelings so tangible,
so real,
it seemed as if you would never be able to forget them.
But Now has turned them into
                                                                   echoes,
and Now has made the colours bleed out
into sepia browns and soft greys,
so that the image,
the memory,
is clear –
but the character, the youth, the feeling,
is disappeared.
  

Yet this is hope –
For today will soon be yesterday,
And tomorrow will always lie awake,
So when it feels like today is just another today,
So why worth the pain,
Grasp the morning with your two palms,
And paint yellows and fiery oranges,
And grasp the evening,
And paint purples and dusky pinks,
So that today is not just another today,
But a new today, a new Now, a new day.
              
          And if it feels as if today will never
end,
Just remember,
that when gravity pulls you down,
and it seems light cannot get through –
it is Time that tethers us all,
like golden trees are tethered to the earth,
and silvery fish are tethered to the tide
and time will move on,
and heal and change and blend and be
the light you now see - or just
                                                     a distant
memory.

For memory is a strange thing,
Like pebbles shaped by water,
It fluctuates and alters with the forces of the sea,
Forming the bedrock of the ocean, yet everchanging
And what was once the present,
is now the past,
So that all you really have to hold on to,
To tether yourself when the current seems too strong,
To rely on when the future may not be a given,
Is your present, your today, and
our Now.