The Lost Garden

We had to change our ways when works began
to build a cycle path. The road we’d crossed
was narrowed, islands flattened by the plan,
while white lines, letters, symbols, were embossed
in earnest. And we missed the former route,
especially for a garden halfway down,
its passion-flower fence, at times in fruit,
and every bloom a cream-and-purple crown –
then, round the front, the roses. Perfect peach
and pinkiness, through all the summer days,
their scents seducing into slurry speech
a band of bees in honey-ridden haze.

Some mornings as we passed beside the wall,
we’d see the grey-haired gardener in his world –
he’d smile, and we would too, and that was all
and ample in the midst of much unfurled.
Perhaps we were away three months or so,
just journeying along the safer side,
distracted by the traffic to-and-fro
until I saw, the passion plant had died –
and at the front, there stood a laurel hedge,
instead of all the beauty of before,
in garish green to shape a soulless edge.
The garden and the gardener were no more.

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Published in Snakeskin, February 2025

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It was hard to write this poem, but by the end I felt glad to have written in celebration of the garden. John particularly likes the band of bees!

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Work to construct several sections of cycle path began in 2023, following the local council’s public consultations in which, as usual, no adjustments to any original plans were made. My road was included in the plan, which meant that for several months the pavement on one side was out of bounds. Hence we no longer passed by the lovely garden, and it was only much later that we realised it was no longer there. The neighbourhood is less than it used to be for the absence of the flowers and the quiet kindness of the gentleman there.

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Next: A Cygnet in Spring