is the way a man scheduled for hospital at two
at ten plants a rosebush by the wall
and asks not to be photographed
as he tamps the earth with the sole of his boot,
the inconceivable earth.

Small comfort that the rosebush dies,
that instead of roses all summer long
is the absence of roses year on year
shifting a little when the light is cramped
or rain huddles in from the west.

This too is the way I come back
to where I was young and my children were young
to where we planted all those summers
and tamped the months around them, hard

and hard to say where the years have gone
when we lay down, night on night,

when the slipway sings so narrowly
and the wind stoppers up the gap in the wall
and the sky is civil in fits and starts
and the boats play their moorings like spoons.
from the journal POETRY IRELAND REVIEW
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Black-and-white photograph of Gil Scott-Heron in performance
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