Raking, in a Pyrenean Garden
There is a quiet gap in the constant sheets of rain.
Let’s go out, first you, then I,
into the small, soaking green and brown back—
the rising smell of roast meat and
wood smoke hypnotises our limbs,
siskins trill within our hearing
as we work together to separate dead leaves
from waking grasses.
Who would have thought this young fruit tree
would shed so much?
Enough to clog these tines and soak our clothes,
many baskets of good detritus
to a pile fit for burning
although I am sad at the thought of it—
like the ancient nest of grass and baling twine
you hand me, sacrificed for a rose’s pruning,
undoing the perfect knot in the convex cup
adding another layer
to the peat core of seasons beneath us
some perfectly intact with defined edges,
some a murky smear best forgotten
and both our backs bowed with the same labour,
the same tenderness in our movements
spanning whole stepped degrees in scale:
the doe-eyed primrose discovered blooming, at our feet
and the obstinate snow and black mountain, above.
Suzanne Iuppa is a poet, community worker and filmmaker based in North Wales. She has published poetry and short fiction in a variety of British and American literary magazines, and her poetry series On Track: Poems from Welsh Pilgrimage was published by Alyn Books in 2013.