Summer 1979

Last of the seventies,

and the door to the door

to my grandmother’s garden

is barred by a barcode

of quivered acrylic –

red, white and blue streamers

a portal to her plastic

phantasmagoria:

bleached gnomes, hollow herons;

her pinwheel-flagged towers,

Rapunzelled by strawberries;

narrow yellow ropes, strung

porch to fence like sagging,

exhausted laser beams.

And amidst all this bright earth,

the plump shoot of a boy.