A Torteval greenhouse
You’d hardly think this structure could stay up.
A rabbit darts from bramble cover. There
should be first buds now, sun catching hairs
on shooting stems. A few years: thorns let rip,
squeezing the wooden frame left and right, glass
fracturing gently, or raised with the roof
as side panels bulge out. What once was craft
and care, ragged-star flowers and hoverflies,
has fruited falsely. What we sow we reap,
we’re told, but no-one planted this: it’s just
whittling entropy, dragging tide shifts, rust,
mildews and markets, costs always inching up.
Exhausted, we swapped harvest reds for cash:
what will survive of this? Perhaps a blush.
Julian Dobson lives in Sheffield. His poems have been published in various journals and on a bus in Guernsey.