68. equinocity - Kit Kelen inviting Renee Pettitt-Schipp into the garden

 

equinocity

 

bright the rainleaf

now such rising

 

golden whistlers tell

spring and so we’ve come to flower

 

even the stone puts out

a lichen traipse map to be read

 

for music here’s roof

in the afterfalls      rhythm!

 

duck under the rain weighted limb then

gather to tune of sky

 

look out, see to the bounce

and bright the eye

 

as will the glisten tip

just everyone singing for it

 

a spangling, one might say

all the season jollies

 

a beak in the leaves of light

breath’s mist yet

 

so come to the middle of just where we are

so shine

 

give the hour away

67. Mark Liston's 'The Bloom Speaks' for Gillian Swain

 Mark Liston's 'The Bloom Speaks' for Gillian Swain

The poem I want to write is fading from my mind the words I need won’t 

float onto a page empty as silence. One or so surfaced phrases flit but 

disappear as bubbles vanishing when reaching their freedom 

as another sound unborn until a slow meditation

a mantra left to float as lotus flowers in a low dish.

It may allow a blooming idea to be a thought to surface 

and gently open to speak.

66. Sarah St Vincent Welch's 'Lawren' for Lawren Wooding -- inviting Lawren Wooding into the garden

 

Lawren

 

our neighbour’s magnolia buds

folded in winter’s shortest days

I watch them over the fence

 

you dream how to press a flower

a present for your lover  

she writes poems  

 

walkersby pick sweet lemons

a friend leaves pickled rinds

 

you talk to a snail

step over its path and remark

on safer paths to wander

 

our garden and the hill sing back

magpies carol you home

 

blooms grow

held in frosts’

swell

 

© Sarah St Vincent Welch 2025

65. Karina Bontes' haiku 'slipping' -- inviting Jacqui Malins into the garden

 

slipping

autumn falls amongst

bittersweet days of rainwet 

slow flaming slumber 

64. Peter Groves' 'Instinct' - inviting Karl van Dyke into the garden

 

INSTINCT

When winter thaws out into spring

and warmth oozes with the busyness of bees

and flowering fragrances and trees

are vibrant with the songs of birds nesting,

there are no greater displays of ecstasy 

than the neutered dogs and cats shedding

their domestic connections 

to writhe in the backyard glass, offering

up their furry bellies to the sun.

63. Ellen Shelley's 'Sweet Peas' - inviting Peter Groves into the garden

Sweet Peas

 

I surrender to the slowness of a day

press my face into the scent of things

I would normally rush by. The leaf of a fig,

the flutter of a moth disturbed on my skin.

 

There isn’t much to remember about this day:

insistent showers, the cancellation of plans,

a lack of energy from the beating outside.  

But at least the humidity will keep

 

my sweet peas alive. Even after shoots were dropped

as the pot slipped onto grass through muddy fingers,

and white tendrils tangled in a mesh of green.

I dug a hole. Gently scooped in cupped hands

 

a maze of dirt and fronds. Tied their limp threads

with bamboo to a sheet of lattice against the grey shed.

Tomorrow after a recalculation of distance from the sun,

they will puff out, lean into the climb, and learn to go it alone.

 

 

 

 

62. Sarah Parker's 'Autumn gathers in leafy light' - inviting Ellen Shelley into the garden

 

Autumn gathers in leafy light

A bird calls and is answered.

A leaf falls and is carried.

Water has no fixed place.