Category: Gardening

A Poem by Hannah Mackay


Grandpa’s Garden
What kind of ancestor would you like to be?


This is the garden you tended for us,
tucked away at the end of an unmade road,
nearly in sight of the sea;
a green growing of life,
after study, science and service,
after making your contribution,
receiving your OBE.

This is the garden you tended for us;
a sun-trap for tea and cakes,
where those who like to work
water spinach and pick raspberries,
and those who like to rest
put their feet up on the floral cushions
of a reclining plastic deck-chair.

When you stopped for a break
between weeding and mowing the lawn,
Demi would rest in the shade,
planning her beagle adventures,
and the friendly robin would land on your chair
ready to help with the crumbs.

I come here to sit in my dreams,
summer sunshine, fragrant with roses,
between the house and the high, sheltering hedge,
podding peas and chatting, or idling on the ground.

This is the garden you tended for us,
the place beyond
where you chose to grow flowers.




Hannah Mackay’s poetry is informed by her healing practice as a shiatsu practitioner. Her interest in embodied creativity includes dance and movement, connection and quiet, stillness and words. Her Grandpa was Clifford Purkis, who retired to Cornwall after a career as a research scientist. She lives in Manchester.


A Poem by Catherine Baker


Prima

In front of the big house, 
a wall made long ago. 
Caerbwdi purple sandstone,
solid standing greys and blues.
Washed with soft green,
colour of the moorland mists.
In places rough enough to catch, 
scratch at my black school shoes. 
In places slick enough to slip on, 
polished by the slugs and snails.
Here, I danced like a prima.

Below, a long narrow patch, 
spreadeagled to the sun, 
rows and rows of little fires. 
Dahlias, on the lam from Mexico, 
in my grandfather’s glowing garden.
Growing fierce, throwing heat, 
bigheaded and blowsy 
but stupendous,
just the same.

There he would be, hard hands 
snipping blooms, bending double 
from the waist, braces strained.
Seeing the prima, he would stand, 
lift up his cap, dishevel his dark hair 
and from a pocket take his teeth,
put them in and smile ceramic. 
Standing tall as Bendigeidfran 
offering the prima a bouquet
of flames.


Bendigeidfran – A legendary Welsh giant.



Catherine Baker has been published by Prole, Stand, Snakeskin, Atrium and Amaryllis. She was highly commended in the Prole Poet Laureate competition 2020. Catherine’s poems in anthologies include Poetry from Gloucestershire, Ways to Peace and Pandemic Poetry. In the GWN poetry competition she was runner-up in 2018 and highly commended in 2020.

Two Poems by Sarah James

The Nook and the Knack

Once my dad would have
looked out at my back garden,
sighed and grabbed his tools:
mowing, weeding, pruning,
smoothing rough edges.

The ivy’s spread started
with my shed. A light touch,
at first. One leaf, and then another,
until the string of hearts grew
clasping, clinging, binding.

Its hold rotted the timber,
collapsing the felt roof,
but the structure remained intact.
A green patchwork
created its own shelter.

Decades later, it’s still growing,
still homing woodlice, beetles and spiders:
sturdy against the rain,
glistening with sunlight
and entwining new flowers.

This year, an ivy heart
has reached the nook in our fir tree,
where I sit snug between sunlit
russet branches, nursing
my troubled thoughts.

The wrinkled bark reminds me
of Dad’s weathered skin,
the crook between his thumb and finger,
his firm grasp planting a sapling
or steadying a nail for his hammer.

The knack of tools and fixing
worked into every muscle,
his fingers grip as tightly as before,
only slower, less determinedly.
I’m not sure if he’s come

to admire a little wildness,
or no longer has the strength
to tackle it.

Our Time

Handed on now Dad’s reached seventy,
his clock takes its place at the top of our stairs.

Its system of pendulum, weights and cogs
beyond me, the ticking’s an agitation I can’t quite

white-noise. I’ll wind the piece as shown.
Not because I need the dial’s numbers

or the hands’ circling to pace my days.
But because it’s Dad’s time, his giving it

to me: the unending tic of its tock
spells the words we feel but can’t speak.

                             

                

Sarah James is a prize-winning poet, fiction writer, journalist and photographer. Her collections include plenty-fish (Nine Arches Press), shortlisted in the International Rubery Book Awards, and The Magnetic Diaries (Knives Forks and Spoons Press) highly commended in the Forward Prizes. Although she hasn’t inherited her father’s love of gardening or clocks, she enjoys time outside, walking, cycling and exploring nature. Her website is at www.sarah-james.co.uk.

Dad’s Dibber by Sharon Larkin

 

Short and squat, a man in a cap,
rolled-up shirtsleeves, old trousers
encrusted with blood and bone,
boots dusted with powdered lime.

He bends double over the latest row
marked out with stake and string
to keep it straight, wields his dibber –
really a sawn-off fork handle –

swivels it into the tidy tilth
to make a little hole for a seed potato.
Later he’ll earth up the row
to encourage growth.

I watch, asking questions ‘what, why, what for?’
in the manner of a five year old –
each answer given
after measured thought:

“It’s a fertiliser. It keeps soil sweet.
Because straight is better than crooked.
Because each one I plant needs a little nest
to encourage it to grow up strong.

Because good Dads love their children”.

 

This poem came out of a workshop at Cheltenham Poetry Society’s Annual Awayday (writing retreat) in May.  The workshop, led by David Ashbee, used wood and wooden objects as prompts.  As I was writing my poems, I remembered my father’s dibber – hence this poem.  Thanks to Dave – and Dad – for the inspiration.

 

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