The Garden

The before is gone, and I’m left now with the after, which is my garden. I call it mine, because it is. It bares my mark, this garden does. I did it all. The yard at first was nothing but a field of wild flowers, dandelions and the like, festoons of yellow florets. I started with a fence, a drawing of clear lines, and slowly, over time, there emerged a small but living landscape. We help each other grow. It’s a labor of love, and a method for defeating madness. Someone once said, Il faut cultivez notre jardin, and I took him and his words and planted them in the yard behind my house.

Sometimes in the day, and sometimes in the night, and sometimes just at anytime, I wish that someone else could see it. But what I really want, I suppose, what I really wish, is that someone could see me. See me in my garden. I’d like for them to admire my garden, the work, the cultivation, the shadow of what was before, the presence of the after that is now. And with me they could watch what’s overhead, things passing in the sky at night. I think one might have been a dream. It shone like one I’d had before, while standing in my garden.