May

When I die I shall go to May.
It will be green, the colour green
in all its thousand shining faces.

Every day will feel like Christmas Eve
when I was ten. Every green leaf
will be perfection exactly

as it is and yet will grow and change
every time I turn my eyes to it.
Every moment will be like the arc

of a diver breaking the waters
of a green lake. I know this because
this is what May is like

here and now. Almost unbearable.
It does not hold for half an hour.
Yet in the shifting, growing hymn

of light and colour and leaf
is the still, simple reason that I garden.

(Monty Don in The Ivington Diaries, 2010)