Once Green

 

Even now,

with only vaporous memory of you,

I hear the clank of the shovel against a stone

as you dig the ridge,

see the manure on the graip

that you’re about to mix into the soil,

smell the groundsel whose roots

release so satisfyingly from the clay.

And cigarettes that would be the end of you,

I see the spiralling of their smoke

from your fingers

like each was a little dream

or the pipe lit and re-lit,

the friendly glow near your mouth;

the hobbit-cosiness;

those once green hours spent beneath the sky.