You planted me two years ago
myself and my sister casserole dish gardens
– you who have always been fascinated
by the miniature worlds of Bottle Gardens and Bonsai.
Bottle gardens grew too lush
in the sweet-jar worlds
of your teenage window sill
Pennywort and Maidenhair ferns
an unruly tangled jungle
and Bonsai you studied and realised
you needed a Master
not just to teach the art
but from whom you could inherit
because a hundred-year-old tree
needs a hundred years to grow
no matter how small it is kept
by tortuous processes…
Coming back from Covid lockdown Crete
you smuggled fragments of plants
to create me – a miniature garden!
In Crete, Jade trees the size of bushes
a plant you didn’t even know had flowers
now grace us gardens as tiny trees
planted next to choice rocks
a nod to the Bonsai plantings
of your dreams
We are mostly filled with succulents
which flowered this year in ways
which surprised and delighted you
reaching a flower-tipped tendril
towards the light but then shrivelling
and dying – perhaps not to return…
One of us you inherited
from your late sister in Ireland
whose partner delighted her
by planting a pink-dyed
spiky phallus of a cactus
along with succulent friends
in the lopsided glass
of a washing machine door
– the self-seeded Shamrocks
came along for the ride
the tiny Mexican-hatted miniature
of Tequila – “For Emergencies”
redundant, since she
had already encountered
her final life emergency.
You took us to work
where there were wider window-sills
than your open-plan hayloft conversion
and you see us and celebrate us
whilst weekly watering us.
People think we succulents can survive
without water but in truth
like most plants – we like it weekly
Meanwhile, as your eye wanders
through we miniature worlds
do you feel in control of your creations
or are we in your life
a living reminder of
mortality and fragility.
Do you wonder if we will outlive you
and carry on, watered by another –
inherited by another?
Do you wonder whether
anyone has even thought
to water us these weeks
you’ve been consumed by covid
when, head full of cotton wool
you forgot to ask anyone
to fill in for the gardener?
Don’t worry – we can manage
the occasional drought!
Can we say the same for you…
© Andrew Wilson, 2023
This poem is posted in response to Björn Rudberg (brudberg) in Meeting the Bar: Critique and Craft over at dVerse Poets Pub
