Seven stanzas and a garden

The garden hedge has been grown

tall and tightly knit;
the early morning light takes on
leaf-colours minute by minute,
not much light  gets through to the lawn
till the sun makes the summit.

 

A small blue rag of a sky is seen

if the eye’s raised right up.
At ground level it’s only green,
fresh or dry as seasons dub
some flowers let into the scene -
a few blooms on a shrub.

 

How simple it is! to grow things high -

a decade and that’s all;
a few seeds thrown down and the sky’s
portioned into small;
some trees in a garden trained awry
morph into a wall.

 

Some trees grown too close, too straight

twist into a fence.
Did the gardeners know what they’d create
by planting them so dense?
That a screen can also isolate,
slice skies into small fragments.

 

The gardeners step back and feel proud

of hedges straight and even
and round the world without a doubt
trees in a home are a given
but then a high hedgerow shuts out
as it shuts in an Eden.

 

Think of a garden green and cool,

shaded early from the sun
the hedge at the edge is a natural rule.
When it's tall and overdone
breaks up the grass into modules
and obscures horizons.

 

Think of Queen Sita in a garden

abducted by a King
and guarded day and night by demons
and that’s the one true thing -
trees and leaves are as much a prison
as a high-walled building.