Poems For Mary

Preface To The Poems

1. The Matchbox

2.  Wild Horses

3.  The Struggle

4.  The Starching Iron

5.  Star Of Love

6.  Praise Song For Mary

7.  The Silver Brooch

8.  Flowers For The Home

9.  How My Son Was Born

10. THE Almond Tree

11. What It Was Like Once Forever

12. Gifts

13. Unwritten Diary

14. Routines

15. Forgotten In The Dance

16. Late Marigolds

17. The Coverlet

18. Smell Of Basil

19. Poetry

20. Gone To Get Ribbons

21. Toasting The Moon

22. Valentine

23. Essequibo Anniversary

24. How Handsome You Look

25. Moon In Old Age

26. 35th Anniversary

27. River Dancer

28. Masterpiece

29. Pots

30. Acts Of Kindness

31. Her Tasks Done Well

32. Nightfall

33. Zoey's Cake

34. The Sound Of Making Butter

35. The Lemon Tree

36. The Comforter

37. Break

38. The Arrival Of Happiness

39. Camp-Fire

40. Forecast

41. "I Will Not Let You Die My Love"

42. What We Want Of Love

43. The Last Dance

MARY'S GARDEN

GARDEN POEMS

As golden afternoon transmutes into silver evening and then into velvet darkness fretted by stars I sit to read and think and dream. It is a place of peace and beauty and therefore truths are very likely to be revealed. Where I am is the garden which my wife has created. God bless her and those who have helped her — Alston, Kenneth, Andy — for what she has quietly achieved over these many years. It is as much a work of art as a painting by a master spirit or a piece of perfect music by a composer connected to the spheres behind the radiant sun and the serenely floating moon. How fortunate I am to step from days of hurly-burly living and the often fractious tedium of coping with ordinary chores and life's sudden sink-holes into this haven of green peace and flowers in the wind. It is but a step indeed and life is transformed. How many possess such benefit for a life-long time? If you are a believer make a holy sign, if you do not believe then bow in gratitude for the favour great Nature has been pleased to bestow.

On evenings when I sit in Mary's garden just as it is getting dark a humming-bird comes to hover and suck the honey-dew from the myriad flowers all around. It is never more than one hummingbird, I can't understand why. It cannot be the same humming-bird for more than twenty years but I have come to think it is. Under the skies of darkening red or deepening silver-blue or the last golden light of a perfect day it darts and shivers among the flowers as I watch. It has entranced me all these years. A very few times it has not come and I have been bereft and I have researched my day to see what harm or hurt I might have done. Nothing so beautiful as its brightness in the evening air — an incandescent blessing, incomparable intricacies of flight, a shimmering amid the green leaves. I am completely silent in wonder. It is the Spirit of the Garden. Long after I have gone I like to think it will be coming to gleam and hover among the flowers in the evening light. And perhaps our grandchildren, should they be so blessed, will in their turn gaze in wonder at its shimmering beauty.