My perfect garden

Bees nimble along the rows of idle flowers

Blowing needlessly

Your hair tousled in a tulip – a daringly close shade of red.

Trees bow to an unkempt lawn but kempt enough for a tumble

or the sight of a cat's tail radio masting along its white-green fringe.

Breakfasts and barbecues happen under the warm gaze of an apple tree, blossom-tipped, ripe or stark as the season dictates.

We relate – here

We break – here

And in your absence I'm consoled

that whatever pictures pass

On this storied patch of grass

- That speaks of us

makes the air reak of us -

That it remains perfect whether we fade or blush

or move away

It will stay.

And breathe.

Streaming pregnancy.

Plump with the ultimate expectation

That nothing very much is going to happen which it hasn't seen before

Or hasn't been before

Or isn't being now in it's dynamic, floating, growing, grounded

Stillness

It wills us to do the same

To love the rain,

Be blessed by sun

To be at one

Not apart yet true to each of our parts

To make every leaving a greeting

An endless flow

Of teary hellos

complementing and abiding

Receiving and reviving

Your cat can take my mouse but I've got a little burr

to nestle in its fur

that'll be planted deep by autumn

By which time I'll be back in the orchard

Quietly forgetting as rotten apples smear my hands

That it was you who brought me here

Who gave me to the land.