Looking Up At The Ornamental Garden

I will stand at the foot of the umpteen steps
to the church among the mucky doves,
I will bring your letters, shredded into confetti,
when the bells spill over with your joy, with your joy,
I will wrap my arms around myself
and dance:  no one will mind me
when your bride comes down the steps,
the sky will fall in after her like a train.

Nanny’s Tree

There is a corner of Alnwick Garden that is forever nanny’s,
      far above the Lords and Ladies,
the St Cecelias in the rose garden
- long after they have lost their heads -
Malus Sargentii clings to its post,
      bringing forth spiky flowers into November
among the pleached crabapples and crone trees.

Ivy Johns was nanny to the Percys from 1946-1984,
  the plaque doesn’t remember a time she wasn’t
  up to her elbows in griddle scones
or walking the long line of children to school,
    her own history was handed down
             as nanny’s stories, nursery games
         of war and Lyons’ Teashops.
       
Jacques and Peter Wirtz, father and son team from Belgium,
       acclaimed for their contemporary designs
which eschew the pretty-pretty,
             are stuck with nanny’s tree
       in their vision of the Garden,
her memorial is unassailable, non negotiable,
         deep rooted as the listed beech hedging.

When the gates are locked at night and the Garden
becomes unearthly, I think of nanny wandering,
        because I never met her, of course
she looks like Gran:  her bun unravelling, her secateurs gleaming
   as she gathers cuttings or scatters eggshells to discourage slugs,
Heavens Bells are strung above her
                            like empty Mr Kipling cases.

Anna Woodford received an Eric Gregory Award in 2003. Last winter, she was a poet in residence at Alnwick Garden, and the poems she wrote there have been included on a CD, ‘Words from the Garden’, produced by the project co-ordinators, New Writing North. Anna is currently working on a writing project with choristers in Durham Cathedral.