As if a stranger, he stared right through me.
I’d found him in the garden, dug in, filthy,
his shins patched against scuff or scratch,
tattered gloves for thorn guard, his old straw hat.
“Who are you?” he asked. “How did you get here?”
Confused, he needed proof, signs to be sure.
I showed him the scar of a dog bite wound.
I numbered the trees he had walked me through
as a pestering child: cypress, low enough
then to leap frog, now taller than the house;
crab apple for shade; laurels; fig bushes.
The yew where I had made my camps. Hedges
he’d grown to keep the world out and us in.
He smiled like buds surprised by early spring.
Josephine Balmer’s latest collection is “Ghost Passage” (Shearsman Books, 2022)
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This article appears in the 10 Apr 2025 issue of the New Statesman, Spring Special 2025
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