James Aitchison: Lost Autumn

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I can’t perform the autumn tasks I love:

pruning gooseberries with a thorn-proof glove

on my left hand and secateurs in my right,

raking out layers of moss from the horse-shoe lawn

and writing poems late into the night.

Those sweet-and-sweaty autumn days are gone.

A second stroke, a cancerous colon;

full stop. I’m gone, too, out of the autumn light.

I’m old and ill, but not too old to care;

poems and gardens still have powers that bind

me to the poems and gardens in my mind;

they are the open secret places where

I said my wholly earthly godless prayer:

wordlessly until I came to write

another hymn to soft fruit and dwarf fruit trees

in lines more mindful, less broken brained than these.

My making days for poems and gardens are past;

this faulty, faltering hymn might be my last.

“Oh, not again, old man! Not another one, please!

Why don’t you count your blessings?” Yes, I bless

this glimpse of a recovered consciousness.

I’ve had life; what’s left will not be long;

just long enough to end this little song?