Late Spring that promised Summer
I hung out the washing as he cleared
A border for replanting.
A shirt half-pegged, I paused
And felt how lucky, our enclosed oasis,
This rectangle of nurtured green
Breasted on three sides by shrubs
He soon would front with flowers.

And as I chirped on,I saw
(I wasn't spying) him lift, examine
(As if he'd found a skull –
A buried pet whose site he had forgotten)
A glove, half-rotten, small,
Too small for me, black satin,
With one pearl on its wrist
And without expression, drop
It in the weed-box.

I stared at him, 
Behind a row of towels that hardly fluttered,
Robust and beautiful, stretching, stripping
Back whatever Winter wizened,
Too absorbed to notice that I watched.

Daniel P Stokes has published widely in journals on both side of the Atlantic