Gardens and literature

A labour of love and dirt

With Kwani?  @10 in mind.

Growing a garden is a dance of chance and defiance

that sharpens your patience

or proves that you have none.

You defy nature; it edifies you.

A language is sustained;

an eloquence made of dust and tears.

Growing a garden is a study in inelegance.

There are no neat conclusions;

no easy pickings. You work through a tangle

of plants you have no name for.

They speak back to you

in tongues of green and brown

and sometimes in the colour of death.

You dream a discourse from broken stones

and walk a path scattered with talking leaves.

Digging is easy enough if you have the muscle for it.

But it’s never the tilling, is it?

Gardening is an attuning to the secrets of the soil;

a willingness to listen to half-told mysteries;

to coax life from reluctant roots and shoots.

Growing things thrashes your illusions

but never leaves you empty.

You are at the mercy of fragile beginnings

that may or may not take.

You shape a thing or two; give them ideas.

While you are sleeping,

little men with green fingers come

and make things grow,

and you reap the joy in the song of a new leaf.

There are cruel acts of kindness:

pruning, pulling, culling, thinning.

Promises are broken as often as kept,

scarring you deep, and

keeping you from ever trying

to own the narrative.

You caress it with miracle fingers;

with reverence, and pass it on.

You are a guardian, an imperfect angel

with no flaming sword to ward off evil.

You are armour-less seraph with the soft underbelly

of those who labour in love, for love.

All other things come second.

You wield the subversive influence of the vulnerable.

You are an angel nevertheless,

Tending and spreading things as powerful as being.