The blooms do a-swage my arthritic wince

As beauty’s balm touches the rugged path

of shoe-gritting pain

that pesters me throughout the day.

M’Lord leans on his staff

Bending towards a Hellebore

whose unseasonal green hue

seems to lighten his austerity

Just a tinge

‘Helleborus foetidus, I believe.

Poisonous and stinking spawn

of the Ranunculaceae family!

No?’

I nod

and recall manicuring it’s beauty

like my father and his

I think

each bud a bairn, as off-spring

from life’s longing for itself

coming through my tender patience

towards this burgeoning potential

of life’s beauty

- and likely death

come from the seed or corm

that my unloved heart

has never spawned

‘Yes, m’Lord

Is deadly.

So.’

As we both stare down

upon this beauteous growth amidst the deep dark wintering sods.

My mind darts to m’Lord’s lost bairn

neither glance

nor step a little left to Hellebore Niger

whose petal white purity

his late wife brought from alpine climes

to memorialise

their sweet little Elizabeth

- my sweet Miss Lizzie

Truth twitches

and my nervous smile is lost

in my walled feelings.

I told no one

but planted my own grief

with Busy Lizzy - impatients walleriana

in a corner of my heart-place

- there

behind the statuette.

Each year I replant her sweet loveliness.

Just as she used to come by

and crouch to help

unworried by my ugliness

as only young bairns are.

But both our old minds now

glance off the past.

‘Ah well. Chin up!’

And he is gone.

But plants I love

do love me back.

This walled garden is a place

that holds my heart

and my secrets safe

Nurturing those parts

unfed by humankind

- those awkward times

when words just fail

like leaden aches

But plant growth n’er

has failed to find a way

to speak of life

in this brick-bounded realm.

Walled in

and warm

Protected with the texture of an old tweed coat

I am enwrapped

in a different clime

in which I happily bow and scrape

away the skin of earth

on creaking bones

and battered knees

to care

for m’lord

- and my lost family