Author: dcstecker

The Garden behind the Red Door

,

The woman pauses at the always closed red garden door

Every time she takes her sunrise summer stroll.

There, she closes her eyes, ever the same as the time before,

And in so doing, imagines a garden in her own mind,

A garden she believes matches the one behind the door.

And her creation becomes more detailed each visit:

Now she can identify specific plants,

All perennials, all healthy, no browned branches visible.

And now she sees the well placed paths,

Making each garden area easily reached.

And now the plants are purposefully and pleasingly grouped,

Shorter plants at garden’s edge, the taller toward the rear.

And now she can sense the gardener’s love,

For the plants are well watered, the bare soil weed free.

Over that spring and summer, she recreates the garden at home,

And should she, during some future stroll,

Perceive an adjustment behind the red door,

An identical change in her own garden follows,

A garden that is now, in turn, a lure of local passerby.

Spring Inventory of a Southern Garden

The potted peace lilies are small but bloom brightly

And might just last through the fall, he thinks.

Now, these ferns would have multiplied and spread too far

Had he not thinned them last fall, arresting their advance instead.

And the magenta azalea grip holds tight still,

Though their petals will fall by the fortnight.

As for the aged gardener, he’s slower to clip this spring, slower to dig,

Slower to bend and to kneel, concerned he might slip.

Yet he just might last through the fall, he thinks.

Hero’s Journey

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Tested by the steep hill’s hike

In the sun’s heat of midday,

Then dismayed by the long tunnel’s darkness

— Shuffle walking and flashlight guided —

She pauses at tunnel’s end,

Hands-on-knees exhausted.

.

There stands the red door, her ninth this month,

Five steps up and then five more.

Regaining sufficient stamina,

She continues her ascent with fingers crossed.

She dreads a tenth disappointment,

But she’ll turn the knob just the same.

Regarding Wooded Journeys

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Some paths turn this way and that and a few circle back.

For others the direction rarely varies much.

Some canopies let in some sun to dapple the pathway.

Others, thicker, lay down uninterrupted blanket-shade.

Some paths vanish abruptly, perhaps just past a bend.

Some go on and on, seemingly without end.

Synchrony

Each week, once the sheets are dry,

And I am on one side and my wife the other,

We remake the bed in harmony

As we slip on the pillowcases

And stretch the bottom sheet corners,

Then again as we tuck in the top sheet

And smooth the quilt,

And last as we fix the pillows at bed’s head

And center the knitted throw at its foot.

One might say that for a half-century and more

We have made our bed, and we lie in it still.