"I had a garden once..."

I had a garden once...

Her lavender bushes
fat with fragrance,
splaying willowy limbs
well-beyond their beds,
spilling
silver leaves and
redolent spikes of periwinkle
along
a meandering
slate
pathway...

where once
extravagant
armloads of
pale pink
roses
threw themselves with 
sacrificial abandon
across the
top of our butter
yellow picket fence
trailing long, slender fingers
dripping with
tiny,
perfectly formed
blossoms
towards
the sidewalk

there,
lovers walking
hand -in-hand
would
brush themselves
against her
perfumed lips and
breathe in
a sacred kiss.

I had a garden once, 
and
just before
the break of day
morning glories would
uncurl themselves
from sleep
opening
pale purple
throats
to catch each
drop of
dew
that
fell from heart-shaped leaves
to slake
a nightlong thirst

I would join them
on our wide
porch
-- books in hand --
for
my own first
holy communion
with the
dawn

words
weeping from
sacred leaves…
each page
a cup of cold water --
Love's refreshment

my version of
a morning glory's
awakening
danced to the 
music of daybreak

One by one…
marigolds,
dusty miller,
sweet peas,
hydrangea
and
hollyhocks

Shake
the stardust from their
petals
and rise to
begin their
daily
pilgrimage across the 
sky to
chase the
Sun

from east to
west
their heads
turn 
so
slowly
I am reminded
of Tibetan
nuns
on temple pillows
made of
green
silk

By evening
the white garden
is ready to
unfurl her
quiet
elegant
display
of Light
reflecting light

where, 
from
beneath the arbor gate
I can find the
delicate
Moonflower,
creamy Campanula,
diaphanous heath aster, 
and always
the patient
pale Impatient
waiting all day
for her moment
to shine

Even the hearty
Daisy looks
like
a slip of
lace
against
the blue light of
dusk

I had a garden once
Sweet Peas
and tomatoes
sat side-by-side --
tendrils
reaching for one another
through the
picket fence that
held
our summer's bounty
like a disciple's basket…
dinner for
five,
And more than enough to
share

Rich soil
stained
my fingernails,
Lavender oil
stained
my linen apron,
Beads of
perspiration
stained my nightgown

when
weeding
came before
breakfast,
and by noon
small streams
salty sweat and tears
carved pale paths
down
dusty sun-kissed shoulders
and along
a back bent with
purpose

I had a garden once
where the bees
were
colleagues...
and we
waged a
miniature war
with aphids and potato mites,
small greedy
grasshoppers
who thought
my garden
was
a banquet,
a feast,
a table of plenty

I had a garden once
that
filled my heart
with color,
and with beauty,
and
oh, so many firsts

First crop of perennials in their
second season,
First warm tomato
fresh from a vines
I'd seen spring from seeds
pushed into the dark earth by my daughters
tiny fingers,

First bundle of lavender harvested
from
plants I'd cultivated
from the cuttings
she'd passed like precious
antiquities
across our shared
back fence...

First summer spent weeding before
swimming,

First race into the
night air --temperatures falling
quickly,
frost threatening
 and
the fruit still warm on the vine...

First sweet-scented
steam from
canning in my own kitchen…

First garden with
my daughter...

I returned in secret
one summer...

long after
we had moved on
to other gardens,
other arbors and
picket fences...
trailing roses

I could barely find her…
but she was there
I had planted her well
and deep

I searched for
the evidence of
out courtship...
and
hidden
were
dry, hard,
darkened
rosehips
formed at the
fingertips of
once supple vines on the
other side of
a peeling picket fence

still,
but only just,
butter yellow

a fence so loved
that a child
spent her
summers nestled against
its ribs
beside her
best friend
sequestered
in
the far corner of the garden
where their worlds
of magic and wonder
met and
the roots of
an old cottonwood
made
natural
earth slings for
them to read in.

I wandered through 
the tangled briars,
where neglect and
abandonment screamed I
had left her unprotected
there alone
but
she'd survived
Lavender spires,
deep blue and
fragrant,
sprang from the
out-stretched tips of
scraggly, tired gray-green
 crones leaning
frail and un-anchored
along the peeling clapboards
above the crumbling stone foundation
and reaching just beyond the
porch's broken lattice

I dared to
walk back
and forth in
front of the trellised gate --
now free from the weight
of antique roses and
English Ivy --
searching for the
scent of
hyacinth I
knew lived
buried
just beneath
the dusty,
littered,
thirsty soil at
the
sidewalk's edge

I keened
my ears
for the sound
of butterfly wings
hovering over
hollycocks that
once leaned against the
wall of the garden shed
profuse in pinks and
reds and
whites that
shimmered in the
hazy velvet darkness of a
midsummer's twilight

I ached to feel
the rich black soil I
knew was waiting
just inside the
garden gate
where heirloom
tomatoes once
dripped their
rare seeds
at summer's zenith

I had a
garden once

she wrapped herself around a little
yellow cottage with
a wide front porch
where I would rock my
daughter to sleep on
summer evenings that buzzed with
Cicadids,
hummed with
tree frogs, and sparkled with
fireflies
singing lullabies about
a moon that saw us,
and the mother we couldn't
see, who
sat under an African sun

I had a garden once
and now I
see what lays beneath the soil but
was invisible to others

I
walked away
clutching a fistful of
her deep
brown
earth

soil stolen from
just inside the
garden gate
filled with
heirloom seeds
and memories of
summers redolent
with a toddler princess and
a mommy whose dreams had come true,
dreams of a child
a cottage,
a garden, and
a chocolate dog with
deep brown eyes
on a wide porch
dripping morning glories
before dawn.

I had a garden 
once...

she lives in me

still