Mr Hobby's Poppies Poem by Andrew Burke

One poppy bends in the wind
precarious as
my memory of our driveway
bordered by poppies -
yellow, orange, white -
planted by Mr Hobby
knobbly old gardener who
spent a day a week
at our home.
Although we could afford
a dozen new sprinklers
he strapped and washered
old piping together
to create his own.
No better portrait
could have been
sculpted of the old
scrawny scarecrow
rusty brown and bent
torn cloth chokers
stained and wet.
They stuttered
and barely worked
all summer.
One poppy in the wind
rewinds me
forty years ...