To be published in the November, 2025 issue of 34th Parallel.

Our Peculiar Garden

You walk in the door
with half a pail
of yellow gall.
 
You’ve tended all
the mysterious places,
on our lands.
You grew a tree
where my face
once filled with parables.
I remember the day
your green hands braided
the rich earth and made
a scourge to purify
our sloppy lives.
 
So now I stop and suffer,
to consider both
the lilies of the field
and that darn unlucky
fig tree.
 
You walk in
with a familiar
tension.  But we
need not toil, nor will we spin,
apparently.
Every fear formed by your steps
is a path. A lesson
of how blood will loosen.
A lesson of opening eyes.
 
These seeds of fate
fall from a lazy grip
to redeem the fallow fields
on their own. It works
if you work it. And also if you don’t.
I agree with you, though.
Our garden’s fruit waits.
“Time to get your hands dirty,” you say.
 
Seize these hands then, too.
They want to be green
before it’s too late.