Preface To The Poems The Matchbox Wild Horses The Struggle The Starching Iron Star Of Love Praise Song For Mary The Silver Brooch Flowers For The Home How My Son Was Born THE Almond Tree What It Was Like Once Forever Gifts Unwritten Diary Routines Forgotten In The Dance Late Marigolds The Coverlet Smell Of Basil Poetry Gone To Get Ribbons Toasting The Moon Valentine Essequibo Anniversary How Handsome You Look Moon In Old Age 35th Anniversary River Dancer Masterpiece Pots Acts Of Kindness Her Tasks Done Well Nightfall Zoey's Cake The Sound Of Making Butter The Lemon Tree The Comforter Break The Arrival Of Happiness Camp-Fire Forecast "I Will Not Let You Die My Love" What We Want Of Love The Last Dance MARY'S GARDEN GARDEN POEMS As golden afternoon transmutes into silver evening and then into velvet darkness fretted by stars I sit to read and think and dream. It is a place of peace and beauty and therefore truths are very likely to be revealed. Where I am is the garden which my wife has created. God bless her and those who have helped her — Alston, Kenneth, Andy — for what she has quietly achieved over these many years. It is as much a work of art as a painting by a master spirit or a piece of perfect music by a composer connected to the spheres behind the radiant sun and the serenely floating moon. How fortunate I am to step from days of hurly-burly living and the often fractious tedium of coping with ordinary chores and life's sudden sink-holes into this haven of green peace and flowers in the wind. It is but a step indeed and life is transformed. How many possess such benefit for a life-long time? If you are a believer make a holy sign, if you do not believe then bow in gratitude for the favour great Nature has been pleased to bestow. On evenings when I sit in Mary's garden just as it is getting dark a humming-bird comes to hover and suck the honey-dew from the myriad flowers all around. It is never more than one hummingbird, I can't understand why. It cannot be the same humming-bird for more than twenty years but I have come to think it is. Under the skies of darkening red or deepening silver-blue or the last golden light of a perfect day it darts and shivers among the flowers as I watch. It has entranced me all these years. A very few times it has not come and I have been bereft and I have researched my day to see what harm or hurt I might have done. Nothing so beautiful as its brightness in the evening air — an incandescent blessing, incomparable intricacies of flight, a shimmering amid the green leaves. I am completely silent in wonder. It is the Spirit of the Garden. Long after I have gone I like to think it will be coming to gleam and hover among the flowers in the evening light. And perhaps our grandchildren, should they be so blessed, will in their turn gaze in wonder at its shimmering beauty.