It was his ritual before
closing up to shut the vents,
give the paraffin wick a
quick quarter turn, and stack the
pots like a terracotta
army. Garden labels and
bits of twine tidied in a
jumbled corner; a long last
check of his burgeoning
green shrine, cosy in its thick
fug, warm as a thunderhead.
 
His jacket, slung over the
rake’s end like a bad scarecrow,
slowly turned feral.  Once smart,
it’s faded pinstripes became
a different costume, in
a world without angles, one
where his Mother hadn’t died
when he was nine. The smell of
it clung to my own childhood,
the comfort of sweet compost
and green tomatoes on the vine.
 
Here, once, I saw him weep when
his wife was taken ill, his hand
suspended on the door jamb.
On another day, loaded
by a winter sky, he earned
a child’s kiss, which he tucked in
his jacket pocket with the
penknife he used for cuttings.
 
Amongst gluts of fuschia buds,
seed trays, begonia corms,
he was held steady by the
mellifluous weave of
growing things, the poetry
of their low acoustic.