At my parents' house

My mother's garden has a park-like splendour.


"It's been better." she says,


"You should've seen it two months ago."


I remember when this silver birch was little more than a twig


and my father


could hold me in one arm, and no doubt my mother


could too. They dig carefully for photographs these days, skirting around the ones that would sting if touched, but here they are when newly engaged


and here my father's father, in his mason's yard of tombstones and ornamental gravel


and my mother's father as a vigorous man - seconder to his brother Jimmy Wilde in the boxing ring.

Both died too soon for me to know them.