The Day Before
In the morning the house is quiet
with sleeping sons, and a whole day
stretches before me, taut between
the pull of the garden, and the list
of indoor tasks: preparation for
fifteen for Easter Sunday lunch.
All day I’m juggling, leaving the back door
wide open so I can flit between the house
and outdoors, between cutting the lawn
in diagonal stripes, and cutting carrots into
minute chunks, between lifting and dividing
those perennials and dividing the Cottage
Pie into two dishes. There’s so much to do.
When I sit down for a cuppa waiting
for the Clementine cake to finish cooking
I watch a displaced woodlouse slowly walk
its shadow across the clean kitchen floor.
Sarah J Bryson is a poet and hospice nurse, who also enjoys gardening and photography. Her poetry has been placed in competitions and published in anthologies, in journals and on line. She runs various poetry workshops in adult education, and in residential care.