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Gardening
Eventually I begin to understand
what the old black gardener has told me
at the dinner table, licking his
tequila-burnt lips: when I die
I'd rather die in my garden!
The warmest soul I've ever met
in this Land of Free.
A weather-beaten vet of wars
as well as unpleasant history
(not just between the opposite skin colors)
that only enriched his earth.
He laughs like the happiest man alive,
telling jokes of the South. Old
American jokes, English jokes.
When he talks about the widow
he's infatuated with, his eyes were filled
with grateful sparks as if
she were one of the precious
flowers of his garden.
Had it not been too late into the night,
he would have taken me to see his garden,
or gardens, brought into life
& blossoming by his big, wide hands.
It is a neglected neighborhood,
my friend told me:
You hear guns go off at night.
They won't even deliver pizza to us!
I think of him now in my own garden
talking to my own flowers:
I am worshipping the cockscomb
crown on Celosia's head.
I have to bend to kiss her forehead
so low to the moist ground.
I am curious about the dreams
the hummingbird has heard from
my white Petunia: Love, love.
Nothing but Love!
I am told.
Between the graceful Lavender
and the succulent Hen & chicks,
a kind of girl talk, flirtatious,
too private to eavesdrop.
Their fragrance quickens my heart.
In the morning mist, I decide
to get lost in Dianthus's myth,
admiring her magical corona,
her rain-happy body and hair.
What's happiness?
I ask Marigold.
Before he turns his sun-searching eyes,
I feel the wide, thick hands
of the old black gardener's, shaking mine:
I ain't need no more in this world.
All I want from that God above
is to let me die by my flowers!
:june/05
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