Your Garden


Are they still keeping your garden well
after your life's long labour
to plant glowing peonies
to water and feed lilies
to prune and deadhead roses
now that you're so still?

Still kept by the hearth of my heart's house
in your lilac bedroom with pot-pourri
with china pugs and silver backed brushes
your oak dressing table and bible shelf

where you slept a widow
where you made every night to your mute god
a plea for me your wayward racked grandson
and where you died alone
in an April dawn

leaving the telephone lying untouched
and your dim budgie pecking and puzzled
that you did not come to open its cage
to feed it from your blue vein marbled hand
that day in early April
when drizzle fine as dust fell on the tight rosebuds.