Reap the benefit

Because I don’t know what’s to be done with all these rosebuds

I tune into Radio 4, Gardeners’ Question Time. I’m startled to find they’ve replaced the pips and chimes

with a Member of Parliament who snaps at me: tighten your belt - tetchy

as hell, every quarter hour. Tricky, I say, with a full-term baby under my ribs (a third, I’m that greedy

but not alone: statistics show in times of recession citizens eat more cake, make more children).

The time has come to cut back, a voice soothes, slash overgrowth, prune –

that’s when my waters go, no free midwife in the whole city to ease him into life.

I’m on my knees when I didn’t get into this to hurt peopleyou know, the MP confides, sorrowful

as a topiary crocodile. Tomorrow I’ll be too milky, too sleepless for economics and backchat. I’ll dig three beds

under the ailing rose, root a child in each (we’re all in thistogether I’m assured, and all the falling petals

will make such a pretty quilt) until they up like spades, turn over new earth.