For when you wanted to say

For when what we wanted to say

would take an awful lot of ‘tell’.

a soapbox, an apple-cart of overturned words

too showy for a time when metaphors

are overdressed for funerals, nor fit for our joy.

Where to begin? It’s Spring.

There’s birdsong and rebirth, pumpkin seeds and planting,

for when, what we wanted to say

should be scooped up in handfuls of berries, not kneaded into earth;

when seedlings are re-homed in wishes and signposts

pointing this way – for when, what we wanted to say is

it is this way hope returns.

05/2020