Potting on
When I remember him, it's first a chuckle. then a rueful smile:
his life was long and hard, had left him next to no illusions.
Then, in my mind's eye, working in his greenhouse:
if ever he was happy in himself, then in that space,
he did not seem to mind the heat, not on the hottest day,
hummed as he worked, the seedlings spread around him,
the pile of little terra cotta pots, one inside the other, at his feet:
each filled with compost, placed in neat rows on his bench,
Then the gentlest work, teasing the seedlings apart, one or two
thumbed into each small crock, so much satisfaction in such simple tasks;
and all around the complex pungency of fresh mixed earth,
of young tomato plants, courgettes and marrows,
and high and low, the thrum and murmuring of insects,
telling him that this was right, that this was how they liked it.
Joe Stephenson
