Garden lessons

Poem by Jennie Osborne

by Jennie Osborne 9th November 2023.

Outside the trellised fence, the frontline
of everyday commits its careless tragedies
and restless feet itch to soldier
in its last chance campaign.

There is more than one way
of banging the drum for the right to be alive.
A woman might sit, on an hour’s furlough,
letting a lime green nugget germinate
in her mind’s mulched maze, look up and see
pinpricks of tomorrow’s colour peppering
the raked earth.

Outside a horsebox is towed from one
worn field to another, while a radio without
a time signature waltzes on in ignorance
of the five o’clock news.

There is more than one way
of dipping into the weed-threaded pool
of stillness. Sometimes a woman might
carry it with her on the streets, a prayer
behind a drum. Sometimes it is her hand
that marches over a page, each word
exploding, a grenade of fearless roses,
over the futile fence.