The Other One

Opening the blue door of a shed he had called
The Other One,
his old straw hat tips from a nail,
doffed by a breeze predicting a storm.

Its crown’s unwinding like a work unfinished,
black band sweat salted –
so much garden slog
under a few retirement years of sun.

So little left to show for it, all that slog.
A year untended, and where are the flowers
of yesteryear? Slug shit mostly,
piled up against trunks of weeds.

A god dies and its universe goes to pot>
I’ll keep his trowels and other diggy,
clawing stuff, though containers and planters
begin and end my Eden.

His hat I’ll let the wind take –
deliver it to the other dimension,
presumably somewhere up north?