Capturing seeds from hedgerows,
parks and disparate gardens
she decants pod and cap,
hip and head into her pouch
while singing herself home to her own soil.
Earlier she had snipped cuttings
from Fuchsia and Dog Laurel,
Privet and Forsythia,
praying encouragement over them
so that they would root.
Twilight suited this activity,
when her sleight-of-hand manoeuvres
matched the flights of small birds.
As minor hedges rose around us
she fed, watered and occasionally
cut them back before eyeing up
the seeds that were everywhere for the taking.
In a season, or a lifetime,
a neighbour’s Welsh Poppies
began to loiter around her garden,
Arctic Lupins from the local park
strutted their stuff alongside her shed
while Columbines migrated across the city
to enhance her lawn.
Her final ‘piece de resistance’
was a Wild Iris root
taken from Boyne banks as flood waters
lapped about her ankles.
It grew slowly by her tiny pond,
while, in the pool where it once flourished,
driftwood gathered,
and storm clouds massed
above the ruined castle to the east.
More at http://mariemacsweeney.com.
