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Peter Carpenter

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The remaining apple-trees are bowed, crusted with moss. One has a wooden crutch to prevent its trunk bellying out on the grass. The quality of the lawn is poor. Again, moss, patches of scarified earth, unevenness. Two bird baths, pine-green, both from mother’s pottery days, glazed and etched with striking skeletal birds. Egyptian in profile. The area is unpeopled.

Round one side, where the walnut tree stood (before the storm) is a coal-bunker, cat’s tongue pink, but mottled green through years of damp. Couple of crows, mid-morning, stake out their territory, spear offerings of stale cake ahead of starlings and pigeons. Squirrels scavenge upside down in trees.

Diagonally opposite, under cover, where a vine still produces shrivelled grapes, was where father’s exercise bike once lived. It’s been removed. Part of the clearing process. Johnson took it. He skipped it. It was no bother – easy with the two of them.

Peter Carpenter co-directs Worple Press, teaches at Tonbridge School, and is a Visiting Fellow at the University of Warwick. Catch, his fourth collection of poetry, is published by Shoestring this autumn; Arc published his previous collection, The Black-Out Book. He reviews and writes essays for Use of English and the London Magazine.

Page(s) 49

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