Silo
Remembering my father’s garden
I am there because he is there
held in the unreachable light
that has long since moved away from us,
his shimmering, greying figure at the end of the garden,
there at sun-up beside
the patch of shining vegetables,
to re-tend leaves and stems,
the dazzling growth bordered in
like a small body of work.
The gleaming, clustered globes
of unearthed radish,
the pea-pods’ smooth-nubbed sheaths,
the tight, emerald swathes of lettuce;
what is still to be toiled at, or reaped,
gathered up into the barrow
and brought carefully back
and housed like his own store of knowledge.
Nothing seeming more primitive
or complete. Nothing more assuring
if what is sure is the hard but steady input
of life into other life.
Still caught in early light,
he stands too long ago
where he doesn’t see me,
where he looks out beyond the fence
across the vaster harvested fields,
a sheen off the stubble,
the other houses and gardens stretching round.
Far off in the distance,
a tall, silver, burnished silo.
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