The steep garden might’ve died,
the lawn with white clover may have sunk out of sight.
These are tired times,
the seasons don’t stick to their promised arrivals,
the snowdrops are keeping the daffodils down.

Mrs Bruno’s green;
you know, where the fox cubs were seen,
froze into vixen silver.
We lifted the greying thatch every summer,
the moss cast dark swabs on the grass
like a doctor.

This might be the worst winter
since eighty-seven,
when the forest looked like Christmas
and the orchard looked like heaven.

For the older men and women
this was just another quarter,
another bud, another bed turned over.

We are leaves browning on the branch.
A year already?.. October?..

By Mattias Thomas