Green Fingers

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R._N._Taber

Today’s poem first appeared on the blog in 2010. Only recently, someone got in touch to say he identified with it so much that he showed his house-sharer...and they are now partners in every sense of the word.

Now, sometimes close friends need to get closer, and getting close to nature might just be a push in the right direction...

Oh, but I so love a happy ending, don’t you?

GREEN FINGERS

Each time I’d look up and see you

smiling from some herbaceous border,

sparrows on the washing line,

daisies on the lawn, sunshine spread

like a burst balloon; I longed
to know for sure what’s in your head?
Do I take it as read I’m only here
to cut the grass, prune the rose trees,
weed the beds, rid the greenfly,
get the garden looking as it should?

Oh, and I would, if only you’d see
to that damn border instead of grinning

at me as if to say other things
need sorting too (Oh, and how!)
like...NOW

Come on, what are we waiting for?

Let’s get going right away, the daisies

will still be here another day

and Earth Mother told the sparrows

we’re gay; a lonely Eden,
this shared pain left unspoken,
the sparrows' cheery chorus
covering up for its ties, unbroken
even by our silences...

Oh, labours of love! Busy hands
in the earth, green fingers

learning all about life, death, rebirth,

how you and I will find our way,
looking world and sparrows in the eye

every day...

Copyright R. N. Taber 2005; 2016

[Note: Slightly but significantly revised from the original poem that appears in A Feeling for the Quickness of Time by R. N. Taber, Assembly Books, 2005.]