Roger Monk: The Garden

 Matted elm leaves abandoning all hope.
 Naked sticks of unashamed winter.
 Glorious nightshade in purple velvet,
 tall as six year olds and just as deadly.
 Bunched violets scuttling over bare ground,
 covering the sins of summer.
 New boy on the block: feijoa, name still attached,
 where once a paperbark, now stacked firewood.
  
 A rock unearthed, spade annoyer put aside,
 a stepping stone in the making?
 Red diamantina, summer leftovers, waving
 stop signs, ignored by frost and sleet.
 Memories of salvias, eye catchers long gone,
 worn out by flamboyance and upstart showing off.
 Snail shells piled in corners, funeral pyres,
 Slain by small blue pellets on warmer nights.
  
 Wet bricks for sliding on, sloped to kill unwary.
 Wisteria peering overhead, curling purple lips.
 Summer hedge of vigour, slowed to nought,
 From rampant shooting fighter of a thousand cuts.
 Blueberries where white dabs of blossom hung,
 winning birds with waiting eyes, first in line.
 Lemon tree stalemate, refusing to play,
 Galls arising from the branch. No game at all.
  
 Shy clivia clumps brightening through the straps,
 Surprises least expected from the shade and damp.
 Lonely, single, desert pea, dead if pampered, 
 Challenging ‘roo paws for the oos and ahhs.
 Tattered, vined glory rags on twisted lines.
 Heating chillies, burning yellow, red and green.
 Upturned mushroom birdbath, now forgotten,
 Once the saving soul for singing neighbours.
  
 Thistle do, the mites of down now standing firm,
 Now giving in. Thistle out to swell the limpy heap.
 Grasses still but not asleep. Waiting on their backs,
 Waiting, ever waiting for the coming turn.
 And over all, with verted bones of seeming dead,
 but slightly budding in the winter sun,
 the golden elm, heat shield and master of it all,
 surveyed in my front garden, much alive.