Using a witch-finger stick
to plant beans around a tee-pee.
She must have eaten thousands of runner beans.

She still prods the earth around a cart-wheel
like the queen of cycles.

The baobab tree went in
with a finger.
The Amazon started as
a drop of water.

The world is revolving around my witch-finger stick,
It is playing heavenly music.
I take it out and the days stop.
I am the angel of photosynthesis,
I am a child playing with a hoop.

She must have eaten thousands of runner beans,
– but her back is giving in,
and the dandelions and ground-elder will creep in,
and the grass will wash into the borders like a spring-tide,
and the ivy will tear the bricks apart
and the bindweed will spiral like an old vein,
and the beans will not be planted
and the world will stop.

By Mattias Thomas