The wall
Long peace with France had softened us,
but life at home was never still.
God knows we fought, often enough,
and hard, about money, the mill,
your family – everything – until
we wore each other down, and learned
the art of never being where
the other was; and in return
somehow negotiated air
enough to breathe; and layer by layer
we built a wall: on your side home,
the church, community; you made
our children yours and yours alone.
On mine, the town, the milling trade,
the rarest snowdrops ever grown.
No other thrill can match the lurch
of coiled desire I felt each year
as new-bred snowdrop stems appeared,
and promised petals – unshed tears –
in unseen whites and greens emerged;
nor disappointment match my hurt,
that winter every snowdrop failed
to bloom, dissolving in the dirt,
and loosing suddenly a gale
of silence louder than I’d heard.
And then, as though you’d waited long
for this, you stepped across the wall
and stilled my silence, broke my fall,
and gave a plantsman lessons on
the way to shelter plants from storms.
James Allen (1832-1906) – the ‘Snowdrop King’ –
a miller and amateur plantsman, grew over 100
snowdrop varieties in Shepton Mallet, Somerset. But after
decades of intensive breeding, his collection was all but
wiped out by fungal and insect infestations.
A slightly edited version of this was runner up at the Shepton Mallet Poetry Competition, 2017