A day so full of promise

you might kiss

your own arm.

The baby bowls

our gathered avocados

across the kitchen floor’s

worn lino. We

bowl them back then

step outside to where

there’s always air

to go around. We breathe

our share, watch

as a mountain range of clouds,

edges lit like art,

moves in.
This morning someone mowed

an oval in the grass

around the cottage.

Outside the mown border all is wild,

roaring. Inside, the grass is groomed,

serene, just like the lawn the year

our childhoods upped a gear. Elm trees

elderly, autumnal. Beneath them

our father and an uncle locked

in combat, fringed

by the herbaceous border.