Shade of Wenlock

What is the mix?
Three two one four two what
What am I doing, this first
first patio I build?

Thirty-six slabs delivered in piles
of concrete-in-buff, solidified dust.
And the mortar is mixed
in an old baby bath
four-two-one seeps into the grass
through a disused plug-hole.

The ground levelled-out to a juxtaposed mound;
Thoughts of a skip prevail tamping down.
Spirited levelling, a hop of ridiculous;
Stamping a shuffle, perpendicular
I shuffle I measure I stamp, and Shout.

And the mortar slowly dries
but hosed-down, cement dust flies
an air-dance seeking my mucous out;
I may yet solidify to an ill-matched statue:
A feeble beacon of constructional ineptitude.

The sharp sand scuffs my knuckles up.
Sweat now beads, scuffed from pores
by a now-old shirt. My trowel slaps on
the first slab-bed, ripples out air pockets.
I'm so professional.

And the first slab is laid, and the next, and the next.
And soon the spirit level and mallet are discarded
in favour of edge-levelling and twisting, stamping.
I move faster when my sub-methodology
succumbs to the ranks of amateurdom.

Two days of scuffling mud, mortar, slabs around
and brushing in drymix for the wind to breathe out:
My patio is done, though not quite perfection --
The corners meet mostly in slab genuflection.

- * -

And ten years hence, I finally give in.
The patio has shifted, it always looked shit.
It was home to a table and four plastic chairs
that whirled in the eddies of hurricane air.
My hair carpets everywhere now but my scalp
It's tough now, to bring this sledgehammer down.
Today, the patio seems surplus to requirements
I will grow instead my own vegetable needs;
Eschew where I can internet deliveries --
My wife hated computers, and thus my obsession;
Loved greenery, overcome by sweet compulsion
that was never fulfilled. Never Shropshire-filled.
I am done. Our paid-out house, my windswept thoughts
hurt still. And this, our little patch of Uricon.