The Garden of Pain Needs a Good Hard Freeze
A Snowy Day
The snow fell first as childhood longing, small as a soap doll’s Ivory curls, blown from paring knife to floor. A few crescents was all there were: on eyelashes, making it impossible to see, another landing bitterly on the tongue, hushing it, dissolving like medicine as roses erupted on the trellis—grown up, unafraid of the coming disaster. Gradually, it shocked the pine and maple, birch and black walnut; it seemed the world was being washed, like an infant in the sink, astonished by a butterfly before it traipsed away: flake of the first felt moment, a heart- in-the-throat one, like those holy seconds before that one door opened or the glossiness of a gaze before a kiss. A rake, forgotten in the garden, is powerless as a child left alone, sat close to the television, pressed against pixels to find the rainbow in the glass. The birdbath, gone solid, X’d by the robin and chickadee, stepping quizzically, becomes the memory of the ice rink where a girl in Dutch braids spun and couples do-si-do’d to the organ, while watchers stood outside the circle, heavy in earth- bound shoes, as the dead assemble to watch us, ringing our every happiness.
Burrs
Burrs spangle a garden that cannot be anymore called such. In autumn, once plot of innocence overrun with seed gone to seed, waiting unmet, ghost-children crying somewhere to be lifted. Ignored, they withered or crawled away. Was I sleeping or reading in a hammock when softly they dissolved? Soon the crisis will be over. Drawing close the liquor and bread, I’ll think I’m in pain. How strange to have lived long in that state and not uttered the word.