Shepton Open Gardens

 Following the trail train

Like a bee come

and gone again

Threading through

The prison garment button holes

It's harder to escape

From cloth

Cloth-ears

And stone imprinted on the sack

The wrack of tears

It was just a widow's window

From where prisoners leer

The sadness hardens like mud

In the sun

It cracks

And new shoots have begun

To spring up between

When it goes soft in the rain

My face her face

The mud or clay

It doesn't make much

Difference at the end of the day

Trudging to the gardens

It was a pleasure

I must say

To walk up the steps of hallowed houses

Painted gay

And hold like a thistle your love

On Labour's day

When the work stopped

We all walked round

To give thanks and pray

Tell me how you did it

Made this hydrangea climb?

Or that Campanella

Spread out like that?

Tell me how you paved the path?

Or made a standing stone?

Or took a building made of glass

And called it your home?

Tell me did you paint your gnomes?

Oh did you sew those seeds?

Did the Georgians clip their hedges?

Had they the green sleeves?

Did their finger tips turn brown, then 

More yellow and green?

Oh tell me why do you where a crown

When you are not a queen?

Oh so la de da, oh so lady Grey

So the Singing night jar

In the tree of Bay

I think it's a Viburnum

Perhaps cotoneaster

Ten weeks, ten sacks

Ten nettles later

Seven letters to the council

Should turn 'em

Oh I love your Verandah

See how the turf does lay

Just a soft mattress

Oh see the lambs lay down in the hay

Watch out I think there's a panda

Hiding in the bamboo

Shoo, shoo, you fellow gerrymander

Setting up your signs of blue

Look out nobody's weeded

Oh but it gives a natural hue

I prefer it when it is needed

For it gives us something to do

Though we strive for perfection

There we usually come up short

And if you ever knew yourself

When you were young and foolish

Did you always do what you ought?

But we are given a license to F*** up

At that age

It's just to keep repeating the same mistakes

Only leaves you looking like you're missing

a page

When you're lacking a pen and ink pot

Yes though it looks like the rain

The pigeons

Still queue on the sill

And Even the crows

Know what they know

That it's only time we're

all trying to kill