Ghost of a Garden

Sometimes I discover I have gone downstairs,
crossed the grass and found myself in here:
the tool-shed caught in a lash of brambles,
bindweed, and tall ivied trees like pipecleaners.
It stares out slackly on a garden run to seed:
the lost tennis court, grassed-over benches,
a sunken barbeque, snagged with blown roses;
the tidemarks, plimsoll-lines of abandonment.
The courtyard walls are full of holes the swallows
try to sew—in and out of them like open doors.
In the corner of the shed my father is weeping
and I cannot help him because he is dead.