(a poem in three voices) <br /> - <br /> <br /> (The gardener) <br />This is my garden; my apple tree <br />has over-reached itself. The branches, <br />weighed down with fruit, threaten to break. <br />If I had read the signs, thinned out when it was time, <br />the crop would be less heavy, the fruit less small. <br />And what there is, is damaged. If it's not birds <br />it's caterpillar, wasp, or earwig. <br />It will all be rotten soon. I don't know why I bother. <br /> <br /> (The blackbird) <br />This is my garden; this tree I sat in and proclaimed my own <br />when it was full of blossom, with war-cry love-call song. <br />Then mating, nesting, bringing up the brood. <br />The days were scarcely long enough, but that <br />was long ago. My children gone, <br />there's time now for myself, time for a treat. <br />My yellow chisel bill invades the flesh <br />of these fine apples. Delicious. This is the life. <br /> <br /> (The wasps) <br />This is our garden - insects do not have time <br />for individuality. We built the colony, us lads, <br />chewed wood to make our paper nest, and now <br />we work to feed the grubs. <br />'Lads', that is, using the word loosely - for us <br />gender is not important; that's for the queen, <br />and, as it may be, the ones who service her, <br />none of our business. <br />But we need food too, and when we find a fruit <br />where blackbird has broken in, we eat our way inside, <br />till only skin and core encase our private eating/drinking den. <br />So what if it's fermenting? If we get tiddly, <br />and roll about, and buzz a drunken hum, then who's to care? <br />And if they do, we'll sting 'em.<br /><br />Paul Hansford<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/whose-apples/
