Caveat
Fiona Benson


But consider the cactus:
its thick hide
and parched aspect

still harbour a moist heart;
nick its rind, and sap
wells up like sugared milk

from the store of water
held beneath its spines,
its armoury of barbs.

And, once a lifetime,
when the slant rain falls
there is this halo of flowers.

Unaccompanied
Fiona Benson


It's raining at the garden centre.
I walk through dripping aisles of potted herbs
in a cool green rinse of aniseed and catmint.

The water falls in diatonic intervals – 
each drop calls out its one clear note
as the canopy of leaves sings counterpoint.

I want you here to listen that way you do
with your eyes half-closed and mouth a little tense,
but don't come and get you. Instead, I rehearse

this trick of solitary listening
against the time you leave, like a beginner
at piano with the practice pedal down

crawling a way through the minor scale
until my fingers have it blind.
But, like listening with one ear sealed,

it misses a dimension, or depth of sound...
the rain taps shallow as a glockenspiel,
an infant music, untutored and unreal.