The very few moments...

The full profusion of her garden
was oblivious to a six-year-old
whose childhood pastimes
blended out such floral splendour.

I sneaked into her paradise
on clandestine missions
to rescue her trees from the burden
of ripened cherries, apples or pears.

On occasions I was invited to enter
her botanical world to be rewarded
with something sweet and sometimes sticky,
just for being her very own

Her house stands empty now,
her garden in a neglected slumber.
Hedgehogs snuggle in hibernation
‘neath autumn’s decaying leaves
petrified by winter’s first frost.

On the eve of St Stephen
I enter again her garden,
this time in search of that winter wonder.
As if by some invisible conjurer’s trick,
half hidden,
it appears in the entwined, lifeless shoots
of summer’s rambling raspberry bushes,
blanketed in white with last night’s fall of snow.

With a virgin’s shyness
it reveals a captivating beauty.
I smile,
and thank her in silence
for her perennial legacy,

To my meg… Don’t think that I forgot you joe… we will rise