IN OUR GARDEN

IN OUR GARDEN
　
There was no jarring ascent as such.
But with stealth senses began to sharpen.
I focused on his eyes and rhetoric
Whilst the periphery around his face danced gently.
　
Idle candidates for hostility lurked to the left
And seas of green trembled to the right.
The discourse flowed with a pleasing vitality
Then in we went to play some ‘Jerry Lee’
　
Senses overlapped as they will on these occasions
Jerry, John and Elvis washed the spacetime in the staid bed sitter
And we were opportunists to philosophise.
　
In our garden we sit cross legged
And we go through our societal motto
It always the same
Though we don’t chant as such
All open land that the public have access to, we own
And we do so for our access to it is as unlimited as it would be
Were we paying taxes on it, which we are not and are all the more grateful for it !
　
A group of Kenyan lads play basketball and smoke joints yards away
The occasional jogger passes the occasional stooped old man
Its all fine and dandy with us.
And who ever mows the lawn?
Twenty-five years earlier
Alan Emptage while marvelling at the ever flowing
Sea of traffic surrounding this same quilt of fields said distraughtly
‘This kind of pollution just can’t go on much longer!’
He meant the world not the park
He meant ‘compare this to eighteen eighty!’
　
I’ve shown my boy what a close scrap world war two was
By pointing out to him the railings round this place
And how every fourth or so one has been trimmed off
To make bullets.
　
　
　
TIM SANSOM 5 TH JULY 2009