Greenhouse
Poem
Greenhouse
I must believe that death
will not come this way.
The coughing, the wheezing
inability to breathe,
they’re all for the moment,
for her to look back on
and smile ruefully
about those frightful times.
She loves her garden.
She smiles a painful smile
as the greenhouse arrives,
a gift for the future
when her excitement
reduces disease to memories
and she has grown her seeds,
planted them out,
observed her flowering
labours under the canopy
with a white wine by her side.
But the coughing continues,
the breathing is halting,
the weakness takes over.
The greenhouse, newly erected
with painted shelves
and plastic pots
sits stripped of life.
Seed packs, geraniums,
runner beans, flowers
I’ve never heard of,
bought on her last trip,
gripped in her eager hands,
now lie neatly stacked
as the door swings with a creak
in the evening breeze.
Michael Chapman - August 2018