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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