Forever Eden

After you’d chided me for planting pansies
in the rose-beds, and drunk your tea,
but too sweet for your liking, you said,
you told me of piglets that had run amok
in the lane, fronted this place in the old days.
How, as only a kid, you’d picked them up.
How solid they felt; not soft and ‘squidgy’
as you thought, and how kin-folk spurred
you on. I could see it all...

Like that first time we met. You showed up
at my front-door, the day after I moved in;
thrust a bunch of chrysanths at me – crimson,
as your face was. Said, tough shit, but
I’d inherited you, along with this cottage,
and how you’d tended the garden here,
for all but fifteen of your eighty-five years,
then, apologised for swearing, attributed,
as you admitted, to partaking of ‘the odd,
swift pint, or two’...

Not your fault, you insisted, if, as a rule,
your missus threw you out of a Sunday
afternoon when you’d had your lunch; you
in your best bib and tucker, Timmy the dog,
snapping at your heels. Then you took
my arm, and we went outside; you winked
at me – hat, cocked over one eye. Spaded
your brand-spanking-new crop of Jerseys,
for, after all, it was ever your garden.
Wasn’t it, Ernie?