Secateurs

by Mark Fiddes

Back in my mother’s garden, 
the fences were always broken
as the whole of creation clambered in
with tendrils and buried nests 
and shanks of love-lies-bleeding.
Star-bright stock, always night-scented,
lit the crazy paving to a fern bank,
where toads with golden eyes 
guarded my marijuana crop disaster.
Ivy followed us all the way indoors
with moths that slept in lampshades.
Beetles fell from our homework.
Chrysalides glistened in sock drawers.
Lawns and borders were outlawed
being too needy and English. 
Any frost chose its victims sparingly.
Every Spring tasted of honey, 
long before the arrival of bees.
Geraniums thrust through rubble 
so green was the blade of her knife. 
The harder the stem was cut, 
the stronger it grew back.
In her hands, life was inevitable
until her fingers grasped only ours
over the bedrail. She coughed
then turned her back once more.
Also, clematis, mint, mallow, foxgloves,
elderberry, phlox and delphiniums.

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Mark Fiddes’s titles The Rainbow Factory and The Chelsea Flower Show Massacre are published by Templar Poetry. Recently, he won the Oxford Brookes University International Prize, the Ruskin Prize and was placed third in the UK National Poetry Competition. His work has also appeared in Poetry Review, POEM, The New European, The Irish Times, Magma, Aesthetica, and London Magazine. He lives in temporary Brexile in the Middle East.