She loved the mountain ash that flowered above the garden,

outside my bedroom window – the tiny four-square garden

that they weeded, tended, watered through my childhood

after lunch on Sundays, trimming privet, planting wallflowers;

then one year I came home and the patch of garden

had grown smaller, meaner, it had shrunk like childhood,

the fence and privet hedge were gone, and there instead

was a little low wall behind which the wallflowers

and mountain ash looked foolish … The bright seed packs of

childhood

are gone now, there are brochures for old people's homes,

the mountain ash has gone too, the stump is dead

and 'Next spring I'll see about the garden,' I say mildly

to the old woman who lives here, a widow, and the fox that

roams

through waist-high grasses as she watches from the window,

staring wildly.