Groundwork
She sprinkles manure over the flowerbeds. Black confetti
making them starker, like the outlines in cartoons,
more defined than before, darker, and with such surety of edge.
The sharp tips of the hedge peep over the fence, straining,
as if awed by her actions, as if fans of her work,
how she separates the hidden daffodils’ future
from their claggy origins, a soothsayer
sensing a likelihood of colour, a coming talent of spreading petals,
such potential for scent, clarifying what’s beautiful
from what’s duller, a true knower of dirt.
I stand at the kitchen window, peering over a parapet of herbs,
craning in much the same way as that audience of hedge,
marvelling at how her presence sorts pleasure
from hurt. Now she’s patting the soil
around a dormant firework of agapanthus
like a silent masseuse of the earth,
flattening, smoothing, easing. Sieved between her fingers
to scatter like ash, as if she’s a prospector
knelt beside a river she’s defined, one made of her own erosion,
sifting soul from matter, but with no rush for gold.
A. J. Hodson studied English Literature with Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia, receiving a First Class Honours in 2013, then studying Creative Writing: Poetry as an MA. He is a secondary school English teacher, trying to impart a love of poetry onto teenagers, not always fruitfully!