Two Poems

By Sheila Jacob

A Letter To Our Garden

Come Spring next year,
you’ll be flourishing in a way
you’ve never known.
You’ll still grow dandelions,
dock leaves and leggy buttercups.
You’ll nurture sprays of fern
and frescoes of ivy that hug
the wall above snug borders
of daffodils and narcissus.

But you’ll be marked with prints
where we pressed compost
across your brick-dry earth
and shed flakes of our skin.
Listen to the slow awakening
of cornflowers, sown to lure
bees from their hiding place.
Listen to the moon-white curl
of bulbs we planted by the gate.

Because it said on the box
they reached twenty four inches
and we needed flagpoles
as we walked from the hardware shop
and through the empty car park.
Because we knew only the living
could heal the sting of death
and we turned to you, embedded
all our hands and hearts could carry.

A Summer Night In Lockdown

Night is arriving
slowly, dawdling
through day’s last light.

I’m mapping it home
past forested mountains
and the bubbling river
I chilled my feet in
while you took photos
of the woollen mill.

I’m easing it down lanes
where you drove at 20 mph
and I glimpsed a stag
through a mesh of trees.
He’s grazing there now,
perhaps, but we won’t watch

or catch our breath, later,
at the crinkle of ocean
on a skirt of sand.

You talk of last year,
next year and dream-walk
lost shorelines in between.
I’m tracking the turn
of the night
into our empty street,

waiting for shadow-fall
and a chorus of birdsong
across roof tops.

Then, we’ll tuck mountain,
sea and river memory
under our pillows,
share each other’s bodies
beneath the warm dark
of a midsummer sky.

Sheila Jacob was born and raised in Birmingham and lives with her husband in N. Wales. She’s had poems published in various U.K. magazines and webzines.

A Letter To Our Garden was written in April this year,a month when my husband and myself usually plant bulbs and seeds for the coming summer and following spring.This April,we spent more time than usual in the garden.It was a good way to  be outside and we felt a particular affinity with all that grew there.

A Summer Night In Lockdown was written this July. My Husband was reminiscing about our holidays in the Conwy Valley and I imagined the approaching night as making a journey across favourite landmarks before it finally reached Wrexham and our own street.