It’s a hot day. Two contract workmen cutting back
a beech hedge in the old couple’s garden across the road
are using a noisy long-arm trimmer turn and turn about,
one leaning over the top of a pair of steps, the other
barrowing sweepings into the back of a white flat-bed
truck with Adam & Eve Landscaping in scrolling
black script along the side. Every so often one of them
pauses, flexes suntanned shoulders, wipes away sweat
with the back of a hand, then frowns at the hedge
as if he’s reminding himself how much there still is to do.

This year’s so verdant despite the drought, almost everything’s
frantically growing itself to death against a clock the experts
say is running down. Only our most familiar insects have stayed
away, bees and butterflies, copper sulphate- coloured dragonflies,
ladybirds and moths. Even wasps quit before they started.

Dropping in on relatives we’ve always loved the other day, we saw
close-up, right in our faces, what happens when synapses start
to fail and the impulse to diffuse key messages from cell
to microscopic cell throws in the towel and finally begins to die.