Some things cannot be mended
Down at the bottom of the garden something moves.
I peer, intent; face brushes cold glass so close
I’m looking, and there! seen by the movement
not the still – two deer.
My face hard against window pane, breath short,
longing, fogging up around nose and open mouth.
The deer, though, are contained, content; until
I’m seen! and bolt! white tails bob.
Later investigations reveal a little some sort of pine tree
that yesterday was Christmas come early
dressed up in frost, one I have adored so much
these last few years,
has been stripped bare; it is beauty broken.
And even as I plan protective fencing, I know
some things cannot be mended.
My heart thumps too hard.
The last strawberry
Mid-November in the northern hemisphere
and a strawberry holds on, ready to snatch colour
out of a sky that sulks and skulks, grey glowering over
such a small, so nearly red, surface.
Bitter winds push it. A swaying, juicy pendulum,
inaccessible to slugs, its neighbour above stillborn,
brown, and quite, quite dead.
And the plant it sprung from holds on also.
Leaves green where others have wrinkled to beige,
it fights to give everything to a fruit out of season,
putting it all into a gamble that might
just have been played too late.
Bio: Maxine Rose Munro is a Shetlander adrift on the outskirts of Glasgow. She writes in both English and her native Shetlandic Scots, and is widely published in the UK and beyond, both
in print and online, including in Acumen; Ink, Sweat and Tears; and Southlight. Find her here
http://www.maxinerosemunro.com
photo by Allec Gomes (unsplash)
Fevers of the Mind 
2 comments