dash

Investing
 
Our temporary two week living together
is wordlessly extended,
as equipped only with electric saw
and uncle’s ancient loppers,
we next tackle the thicket crouching in the back yard.
 
I load as fast as you chop
stuff hatchback and estate like suitcases.
‘Radio Gold’ becomes the soundtrack to our tip trips,
you drop trivia about Rod Stewart by the hopper,
I punch the air out my window as Status Quo comes on.
 
Then I lop through the electric saw’s flex.
You watch in silence whilst I scrabble though
drawers for tape and tools.
As your curses’ crackle at pliers and plug,
I return to tugging at brambles until I am thorn whipped.
 
My absence liberates you from
the safety harness of ‘be careful’.
A ladder is placed against a shimmying fifty foot fir ,
you Barnum-straddle between rungs and tree,
until the Chesterfield top is lopped off.
 
Saw stood down in its’ B and Q box,
I begin to plant out. You watch mug in hand,
thoughts already on the first race at Ascot,
but returning inside to laptop and TV
‘we are going to have a nice garden’.

Fiona Sinclair

If you have any comments on this poem,  Fiona Sinclair would be pleased to hear from you.

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