I’ve finally been persuaded to open the garden I’ve been working on for 21 years

After exhausting days spent digging, as part of her work with the National Gardens Scheme, poet and artist Frieda Hughes finds solace on her balcony at sunset

LOW FLYING BATS

The moment that I anticipate at the day’s end in a week’s planting,

Galvanised by the impending NGS opening,

Is the sun as it sets the clouds ablaze in their froths of gold and pink,

When I down spade, wheelbarrow, rubber gloves,

And straighten up from digging

And rolling terracotta pots that outweigh me

To emptying the dishwasher

And join my two ageing huskies on the balcony,

As near to the horizon’s view above the rooftops

As I can aspire to, where we listen to the birdsong finale:

The sparrows and blackbirds hysterically fussing themselves

Into the safety of their hidden places.

I wait and listen, and drink something to toast

The fur-bellied bats on their outstretched rubber sails

That skim my head, tilting and arching faster than an eye’s focus,

Gathering airborne insects in their helter-skelter trajectory,

Stirring the scent of wisteria. Above us, like stealth bombers,

A slow formation of geese honk at they pass overhead,

And the small birds close the night down with their last cries

And fall silent as the darkness engulfs them.