for Lila Hancock

Fighting the wind, I gathered the groceries and brought you, fragrant savoury thing, home, and into the warm kitchen with the red-checkered tea towel fallen on the floor, ginger cat sleeping on it. Digging up the needed sturdy trowel, clay pot, nutritious soil, I laid everything out on the floor on an old sheet so I could make a mess. I shovelled some dirt into the pot, enough to fill half-way. Putting the trowel down, I ran my fingers through the velvety richness of the slightly damp soil remembering, as I always do, Lila, who wouldn’t wear gardening gloves because she adored the feel of earth against her skin. Lingering in her memory, I slowly reach for you and breathe into your leaves. Pungent spice lighting up, delighting my senses, I brush my lips across your lush leaves.

Cat stretches

first front, then back

Walks over and sniffs