when we are one that late lonely agapanthus and I.

I see her in the corner garden on my morning walk,

I, working the wrinkles from my bones, she,

face towards the not yet risen sun, ready

if not willing – or is it the other way round? –

to accept, like me, the perhaps gift of another day.

Both agapanthus and I were caught unawares: she,

that while still in her bulbous bed beneath dank earth,

the rest of her cohort would rise en masse, live

their short lives and be gone, and I,

that a dear friend who’d always been there,

would sicken and die in two months.

So, agapanthus and I greet each other, fingertips

to petalled stems, and pretend for the other’s sake,

that there are not times we stand instead

with the old dog two doors down who, despite

the gentle tugs from the other end of the lead, sits

on the kerb to stare back at the house in which his bed,

so lately left, is still warm, and to which

he would happily return, to sleep through all eternity.