The Letter

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The letter


I read your letter: then I took a knife
and went into the garden. There was much
that needed doing: everything in leaf
and flower, grossly intertwined; each branch

a mess of sappy green. I pruned the vine
until the twitching stalks lay in a pile.
I pulled the red camellia blossoms down
And ground them into fragments with my heel.

The fruit trees next; and how the ladder shook
With my good work. The limbs were hard to burn –
The buds curled up and shrivelled in the shock.

The willow’s vulgar, semaphoring green
was last. The stump shone pale above the earth,
neat as a tooth set in a hungry mouth.


Connie Bensley






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