Waiting for the Flowers

by Susan Barnard

 


Rare heat of early summer
seeps through mica’d stone,
weights the peated surface
of trowel turned soil.
From bellied earth braced
between church and low stone wall
an old soldier stoops and pulls
a fading mound of spring’s bright flowers,
opens a bag, their shroud.

Unstealthed by sunlight,
in the pause of still midday
a beetle stark as a sexton
on compost soft as moth dust
stands waiting for the flowers.