For a while you had straw for legs
with stuffing falling about at your ankles.
You stepped as if teetering on a precipice
the ground groaning up to meet you.
The garden re-invented your gait
allowed you to stop in time
to rarely, if ever fall.
Taught you to shift your weight
from gooseberry bush
to blackcurrant
to spill passed angelica
and birdsfoot trefoil
down to the meadowsweet
of the long acre.
These days you get frustrated with catgut
the too-fine a thread for sight or time
bang old CD’s against the tabletop
play barely audible cymbal crashes,
spend hours gluing fake jewels—
gems to make the magpies happy
when all you want to do
is frighten them away.
Your scarecrows
owl-eyed and reflective
hang to dangle just above the blackcurrants
shimmer against the reddening
skin of the gooseberries
walk beside the raspberries—a legless gait in common.
When the blackbirds settle in the greenery
instead of stealing the soft delicious bounty
they straighten their beaks in the mirrored shine
before flying on.
………….
Sinéad McClure is a writer, radio producer, and illustrator. She has written and co-produced 15 dramas that have aired on RTEjr Radio. Her poetry and prose has appeared in Crossways Literary Magazine, Meat for Tea—The Valley Review, Live Encounters—Poetry & Writing, Poethead and the Ekphrastic Review. She has also written articles for ALHAUS magazine. She often revisits the theme of the natural environment in her work and has a particular interest in wildlife conservation. https://www.thecalendarroad.com/
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