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A Garden

In the dried-up dirt of the garden corner      

There's a flower waiting to be watered      

Its petals stretch towards the sky     

Pink and white and hope     

And fall down towards the earth     

Pink and black and hope     


In the shadow of the great cedar tree    

There’s a gardener leaning against a shovel    

His weathered forehead glistens with dew       

And his wrinkled hands mattered with soil    

All petals stretch towards that shovel    

In the dried-up dirt of the garden corner     

 

Next to the gardener under the cedar tree

Flowers bloom with the glory of sunrise

Their stems climb high against his thighs

Pink and gold and hope

And under the gardener’s eyes they smile

Pink and gold and love

 

This garden is a story, this garden is a song

This garden is a tribute to the gardener’s eyes

This garden laughs, this garden dies

This garden is fuelled by the gardener’s cries

By tears that flow, that land, that sink

Into the thirsty roots of the flowers’ lives

 

The pink-and-black flower waits, fighting.

One day, when the leaves turn red-and-gold,

The gardener leaves his shovel and walks

To the dried-up dirt of the garden corner

He blows on the stem, gently, steadily,

And his breath sounds like a lonely song

 

The flower sighs and rests its pink-and-black petals

Against the gardener’s slightly wrinkled hands

And the droplets fall in rivulets of tears

Feeding the dried-up dirt of the garden corner.


-©Estelle Wallis, August 2020

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