This is the time of year when people die:
August, and these daisy-faced things
blare like small suns on their swaying hedge
of leaves, yellow as terror. Goodbye,
they shout to the summer, and goodbye
to Jim, whose turn it was this morning:
while in another hospital his wife
lies paralysed, with nothing to do but lie
wondering what’s being kept from her, and cry –
she can still do that. August in hospital
sweats and is humid. In the garden
grey airs blow moist, but the mean sky
holds on to its water. The earth’s coke-dry;
the yellow daisies goggle, but other plants
less greedily rooted are at risk.
The sky surges and sulks. It will let them die.