As winter ends, winter starts again.
Late March warmth lies with coughs and fever,
face-grey shadows darken longer days,
and high-sky sun shines on windowless wards.
Hospital green is the season’s colour.

Garden foxes play in rose-dawn light,
rising doubt hangs in latent streets, odd wasps
drift between blossoms spreading and seeding
unwanted fruit, and the numbers explode
like purple globes of allium blooms.

Thoughts of renewal are not what they were:
first-cut strips of grass mask earth beneath
and, at a safe distance, tender leaves grieve.
Summertime begins. Winter starts again.