Sweetbriar 7

There is space here and no need for ghosts
in this thin strip of life we walk through
today, temporary as bees and butterflies

between celandine and thistle heads,
the flash of silver birch tugging our eyes
in wind warm with rain. Birthdays,

deathdays, and what lies in between:
about five miles from here where we can walk
way up to where we can no longer breathe.

That’s a morning run, in a whole universe.
This delicate habitable skin the earth
wears and we teem within. No ghosts

here where the Turpin brothers push up
in dopey, purple-faced columbine;
Margaret Thompson shines in cow parsley;

Roy and Betty May Shimmell wriggle
in caterpillars halfway up the hazel, blink
in the dormouse nibbling on them at night;

Lynn Evans, Jean Evans, craneflies
on cornflowers, lurching to stillness;
Madeleine V-R, Dan, Christine Astill

gleaming in the weasel puncturing the vole,
beating through the vole taking on the acorn,
handing out the orders in the acorn DNA.

Thank you all, whoever you were. One
community of the dead in life, communing,
to hold in common, to share, not ghosts

not separate, but inarguably, physically there.
Space there is in Sweetbriar 7, Charlie’s glade,
for us one day; and then let someone else

learn the language of the dead living
and walk around this small woodland
burial ground celebrating decay.