☛ Creative Section of October, 2024 issue (Vol. 5, No. 2) will be published on 1 December, 2024 (Sunday).

MY GRAN’S GARDEN

 


MY GRAN’S GARDEN

 

-         Mike Jenkins (U.K.)

 

  • My gran’s garden stretched out like an estuary before me. 
  • From lawn to flower-beds , to trees and ramshackle shed
  • On to the once vegetable garden become wilderness.
  • Close to the house a metal tank of water,
  • Holes in the grass where a weasel used to raise its head at dawn like a periscope.
  • The corrugated iron and overgrown roof of a small bunker
  • Which was constructed because of the bombing of Barry docks.
  • I once retreated to the shed to revise and escape my gran’s constant questioning about day and time.
  • Further back , I climbed the conker tree and pretended not to hear my grandad calling me to go for tobacco up the corner shop.
  • The garden yielded almonds and hazelnuts ,but my grandad’s fruit bushes had withered. 
  • Long after my father kept a horse out there, my gran would gaze through the window and see it , roped to a tree.
  • My father sold the lot for a caravan , which ended up getting flooded somewhere on the south coast of England .
  • He blamed my grandparents for everything, especially the very sharp knives he wielded , threatening.
  • The garden becomes wilder in my memory : the concrete path stopping at a wire fence. A place where nobody else would venture .

 

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