Investing
 
Our temporary two week living together
is wordlessly extended,
as equipped only with electric saw
and uncle’s ancient loppers,
we next tackle the thicket crouching in the back yard.
 
I load as fast as you chop
stuff hatchback and estate like suitcases.
‘Radio Gold’ becomes the soundtrack to our tip trips,
you drop trivia about Rod Stewart by the hopper,
I punch the air out my window as Status Quo comes on.
 
Then I lop through the electric saw’s flex.
You watch in silence whilst I scrabble though
drawers for tape and tools.
As your curses’ crackle at pliers and plug,
I return to tugging at brambles until I am thorn whipped.
 
My absence liberates you from
the safety harness of ‘be careful’.
A ladder is placed against a shimmying fifty foot fir ,
you Barnum-straddle between rungs and tree,
until the Chesterfield top is lopped off.
 
Saw stood down in its’ B and Q box,
I begin to plant out. You watch mug in hand,
thoughts already on the first race at Ascot,
but returning inside to laptop and TV
‘we are going to have a nice garden’.

Fiona Sinclair

If you have any comments on this poem,  Fiona Sinclair would be pleased to hear from you.