The Garden Plot Poem by David Lewis Paget

‘What’s at the end of the garden, ’
I would ask my Lisa May,
Each time she came through the garden gate
With that look of pure dismay.
She’d shake her head, ‘It’s the garden bed,
Overrun with weeds and toads,
I’ve said before we should move it more
Away from the old crossroads.’

It didn’t seem to be logical
To remove a garden bed,
‘What difference, if it goes east or west, ’
Is what I plainly said.
But Lisa May was intractable
With her fixed ideas and views,
She said she hated the crossroads that
Still ran beside the mews.

I never used to accompany her
I’m not a gardening man,
I tend to let it run riot as
It does, in nature’s plan.
But Lisa wanted to tame it, by
Applying stakes and rules,
To straighten this and align with that,
She’s one of nature’s fools.

I never took her too seriously,
She’d come back and complain,
‘Those toadstools seem to be spreading from
The vermin in the lane.’
I didn’t know there was vermin so
I said that I’d take a look,
Reluctant, as I was always but
I sighed, put down my book.

We made our way down the garden, and
I noticed that there were toads,
Their croaking seemed to be loudest
From the site of the old crossroads,
And toadstools clustered around the base
Of an ancient weathered post,
As I heard a sound that came from the ground
Like when a victim chokes.

‘The mud there seems to be heaving, ’ said
My naive Lisa May,
She didn’t know that the post had been
A gallows in its day.
And felons, hung for a week or so
Were buried at its base,
I hadn’t dared to reveal it or
We’d never have bought the place.

‘The land’s a little unstable here,
I see just what you mean,
Perhaps we can move the garden bed
To the other side of the green.’
But Lisa May wasn’t hearing me
For she stood stock still in shock,
She was staring down at the muddy ground
At what I’d thought was a rock.

‘That’s not a rock, but a skull, ’ she cried,
And I must admit, it’s true,
That skull rose up of a killer
Buried in 1822.
Then Lisa May, who screamed and ran,
Now leaves the garden alone,
So nature’s riot has run amok
And the grave is overgrown.

22 August 2015