Life unfolded, layer upon layer,
Lined with experience incomplete
Without seeing another's unfolding,
Layer upon layer, in colors that bind.

How hard it is to be one's own
To insist on wings that might fly you to the moon
Or wear ten hats when the naysayers chant, "one!"

To withdraw to your chamber when the world says, "out!"
And stay cool and clear on a white hot day
As the mauve sky over the shimmering lake.

Once I dreamed of islands and atolls in the vast ocean
Of the innermost cell of secrets beyond knowledge
Of the coral reef or the night sky
Under which the leopard runs
​Outstretched across the grassland.

In the whisper of a spiral
That unfurls in the dance
No clash, no interruption,
No troubling footprint.

Outside, heat melts steel
But here you are mild,
In the house of glass windows
The tenderness of life.

She'd kept up, and grown high and tall,
And thought she'd reached the pinnacle,
But looked across the land and wept:
Why was she here? What use was there?

A blade of grass, so meek so strong,
A stranger with no airs at all,
Stood steadfast by and took the breeze
And gave a friend the gift of peace.

Two days, two nights
I watched in terror,
As the lovers cast their fates together.
For the greatest mystery of them all,
​New life, I'd watch and wait forever.

The red giants of first summer
Had one solemn task
To shed beauty for wisdom
Before come of dusk.

Some of them shut themselves
Others breathed fire
But a messenger of eternal life
Convinced them of the divine.

Almost a quarter of a century ago, I was privileged to move to a small island that had the early makings of a garden. More than thirty years before, an old man for whom this place was therapy for depression had planted some flowers that tolerated the rocky, dry soil. After over twenty years of tending this garden with the help of pollinating insects, I have watched it become a small paradise that in June-July defies the wildest imagination.

In between the heavier poetry and prose in this blog, this is the story of a garden in spontaneous unedited images and butterfly words. It's all play, but that is survival in the most challenging of times. Through play we experience perspectives that change us and our relationships to the world around us. In a garden there is rhythm but also the promise of a new way.

Garden Story #1:
A hungry spider waited for a succulent meal to come
And as she waited on thistle
Gathered all the rays of the sun.

Four hundred years
Like plaque decaying
Spirits unmoved
Brittle bones swaying.
He said, "Shoot the protesters, keep them apart,
Stop it, right now, that shift of the heart."

Tears rage a storm
A flood unrelenting
A ship sailed downriver
Chains unbending.
The screen's cry is distant for memory so loud,
Eyelids unmoistened, no shift of the heart.

Blood on the windshield
History raining
A drive-thru hanging
What else is playing?
"Leave that strange fruit," she said, "not in my park,
Why should I seek a shift of the heart?"

Spiteful as a number
On Bluestone Road
The unseen insists
"Why was I born?"
Inured in white cotton, "Feelings? Don't start!"
Revere the heroes, leave be the hearts.

A caged bird sings
Over an old banjo
Sunday's crossed bridges
Baton the votes.
American pie, sweet, good and tart
A taste so addictive, it addled the heart.

A knee at the game
An anthill unbound
Whose brother? Whose sister?
No up, no down.
Stay with the darkness, know there are stars
Look into the deep for there shifts the heart.

On the "casualness" of racial disparity inspired by Attorney Kim Foxx.

First breath shocked with divinity, bright as an explosion,
Now it was mine, all mine, and I cried in the commotion.
They said I was noisy, an unruly babe,
So, my breath and I, we were put in a cage.

Mother, where are you? Father, can you hear?
My chest heaves for someone to listen to my fear.
The halls sucked the air, every lung had exhaled
Where had it gone, the living breath of the world?
 
Soon I awoke to the insidious scourge,
My own breath was the trouble, it had to be purged.
Deny it, suppress it, put it out with my thumb,
Leave no room for exception to what had to be done.
 
I once met a man who stole breath to blow fire
His own breath was long gone, one grotesque but admired.
He could free us who lived by the pain of own air
Deliver us from oxygen, death is only a scare.
 
There were people who said no one listened to their words,
Was their breath so precious? It could barely be heard.
I had given up my own, shut my ears and my eyes,
Thus, I kneeled on their necks and ignored their raw cries.
 
Is there anything left in me that deserves to be saved
But the memory of sweet breath I once treasured and praised?
Come back to me again, in the time when I hoped,
And I will listen to your heartbeat, dear breath that I choked.

​On the murderers of Georg Floyd.