Wild Strawberries

When Mum leaves the clean-kind nursing home,
and joins Dada in the cold Merstham grave
dug in chalk and clay a dozen years ago,
and rests with him on the lives they gave,
in his strong bare-boned frame, consummate,
beside people with whom they spent their days,
the snowdrops she worked hard to propagate,
and the road, I will plant wild strawberries.

I will plant them in the re-turned strip:
beneath the headstone, and the uncropped grass,
beyond the reach of absence, kinship,
fear, and the dismantling. In the balance
wild strawberries will root, grow, and fruit red
out of the love they made and left unsaid.