When you spoke, after dinner,
of haymaking, of loading
the tractor at dusk and the
new fragrance of hay you breathed
in with delight (and so out

in your talk), first came to mind
my garden - the basil there
that stains my fingers with its
pungency, and washed linen
freshening on the line - and then,

on my way home, the prayer you
said before food, which again
now fills me with thanks, as if
savour or scent were the thought
no gift can be good without.
...