The Tidy
i.m. Ann Drysdale

Hi-Vised volunteers swarm the place,
jacket-backs labelled Friends of the Park.
They carry rakes, secateurs, black bags
to flutter and snap in the wind.

A man pulls strands of ivy
from their creep across a path,
a woman picks fallen leaves
snared in a shrub, rakes below.

Another pushes a supermarket trolley,
one wheel wobbling a squeak along the path.
She unties shrivelled flowers from memorial benches,
adds them to her collected caged rubbish.

Three men tidy the stream that fills the lake,
pulling weeds from between stones,
picking sweet wrappers tangled in creepers.
One stands ankle-deep, filtering water through his fingers.

I stand on the bridge, my back to the men,
lean on the rail to watch the water flow
and think of a friend who played Pooh-Sticks
in Paris, her husband’s ashes in a small pot,

how she ran across the bridge to shout
Go Lover Go! as the plastic canister
bobbed and raced on the dark water.

Angela France has had poems published in leading journals and has been anthologised a number of times. Her fifth collection, Terminarchy, came out July 2021 with Nine Arches Press. Angela teaches at the University of Gloucestershire and in various community settings. She runs a reading series in Cheltenham, ‘Buzzwords’.