Musing

she greets me with a bowl full
of pebbles, polished white, fit
for any garden but mine, where
the weeds straggle up, poor

shades of their packet-pictures, victims
of this poisoned soil, uncatalogued,
unsurveyed, without any papers to
prove ownership

as the ship sails away, puffing
steam, a dream in grey tones,
off for the Argentine, or some
similar clime, where the sun

sears over the ground, relentless,
and there she is again, dressed in
green and proffering a plate of
fruit cut to fit my mouth

so it goes, in every season, hot and
cold, the taps running to fill the
bath, scalded or frozen by turns, oh
most intemperate of visitors!