By David J Costello
Each year he took
his knife to her.
Stropped it on the
dry-stone wall.
Honed its cut in the
time-honoured way.
And each spring
she offered herself to him.
Her thin limb crowned
with a rose of scars,
its pink stump forcing
the usual flower.
And he never had a
garden all his life,
and he didn’t have a
rose-bush, just a wife.