1

Late afternoon
leaving the city
the bus route intersects
the terraced houses,
row upon row:
right to the valley floor,
left to wooded heights.

In a bay-windowed room
a child sits at a table
beachcombing the net.
Tea is past
and there is gentle talk of
volcanoes , the Verungas,
and gorillas in the midst.
Outside, and a floor below,
a garden nestles into the dusk,
a blackbird settles itself with song.

Later, at the same table.
there is a silent grace.
A shy five year old
in scary pyjamas
comes to say goodnight.
For supper: a goat’s cheese flan,
a simple salad,
pink wine,
strong coffee.

On the mantelpiece:
the familiar jumble of cards and photos,
a collage of family faces distant shores.
On the walls:
grandmother’s woven rug,
her grand-daughter’s textiled strata,
an embroidered geology.

2

The next day,
so bright and clear,
the garden bench is warm by ten.
We sit surrounded
by the evidence
of this growing season:
emergent plants, the possibility of fruit,
even declarations of vegetables.

As ideas flow
across cake and coffee
so the shadows move,
shaping depths, enriching tones
on greys, within greens.

In the midday sun,
the garden becomes
a wild tracery of lines
as perspectives
distort, corrupt, thicken . . .
and space opens everywhere:
foliage as yet transparent
no shelter to stalk and stem.
Their very arteries revealed,
plants bask in the fragile heat
of ‘just’ Spring.