Lost Garden (Poetry)

It was farmland once — my father’s garden.
The estate was new when we moved in
our road named after the ‘Long Field’
though few of those young families perhaps
considered the raw earth or what it held
of a rich agricultural history.

He cultivated our small plot —
seeded, weeded, watered, pruned and cared
for over thirty years. How any times
he must have mowed the lawns — front and back
until a stroke nagged him to give up —
transfer to a garden-free sterile flat.

Whoever lives in our house now
clearly has no use for green or grass
the lawns and tended flower borders all
buried under slabs — out front’s a car park crammed
without a thought for what lies trapped beneath —
those years of toil. Spent seed and yards of cold
cold earth denied the sun and the rain’s lost love.