Ragged lawn

                                            ‘Tis an unweeded garden
That grows to seed, things rank and gross in nature
Possess it merely.

– Hamlet act 1 sc. 2

A man came in, from time to time,
to mow and weed and hoe and trim
the ordered world you left behind.

He worked with diligence and speed,
but it was only work to him,
and then he stopped – I don’t know why.

And now, my cat stalks wrens among
your ragged grass and giant weeds,
and straggling dogwood overhung

with thorns – she holds her hunter’s pose
amidst damp shade and rotting leaves
where phlox once bloomed in open sun.

The perfect geometry which framed
your realm has all but decomposed –
its squares and pentagrams decayed.

This wilding hunter’s paradise
where any seed or rootlet grows
is fine for birds and butterflies,
but not the garden that you made.

Published in Pennine Platform No. 83