Mending the gate
He had been mending the gate,
still good for a few more years.
He leant against it, sucking his pipe,
not troubling to sit, with his rheumatics,
but slackened his collar
from the chafing growth,
red raw and stinking.
It had been cut back. And back.
Refusing to die.
She padded to the compost
with the peelings, the secret festering.
An intruder on fifty-three years of sharing,
I stood apart,
awkward in my adolescence.
She shouted over the fresh-dug earth
You’ve got to go back to hospital tomorrow.
He turned away with deaf ears
easing the bolt home.