You are planting me a garden of wild flowers

You are gently tucking strawberries into the soil

You are watching rain leak through the roof

And you are telling me about the violence of waves that arrived with the last storm.

I am scraping mud off my boots

I am picking rosemary and rubbing it between my palms as I walk 

I am sitting in churches staring into the marbled face of the Virgin Mary

I am sleeping under a clock tower that chimes through the night

I am holding out my herb-stained hands to horses with flies on their backs.

You are reading about sailing the South Pacific

You are asking neighbours for compost

You are anchoring a boat

And you are waiting.

You say you are not, but when I can’t give you a date

I am met with silence 

Which is fair – what is there to say?

The hills are greener than I thought here, I say instead, and I name the birds I can see.

It would break the warbler’s heart 

to ask her to picture hands in soil

Hands touching the surface of sea water

Hands pulling a sheet to their neck at night, waiting for the other to finish staring into the eyes of Madonnas 

Waiting for her to plant rosemary into the soil rather than pick it

 

– Hands (Opposite San Martino Church in Strove)