Kitchen Garden
As a docent at a garden tour in a rainstorm, I realized how wet behind the ears my soul still is
The seed of suffering in you may be strong, but don’t wait until you have no more suffering before allowing yourself to be happy. Thich Nhat Hanh
Rain, grand for the garden.
For me, a mixed blessing.
I can unfurl with nasturtiums
lifting their dainty faces
dewy at high noon (my own,
more weathered)
to rough seas of leaden clouds.
I can dive like a bee
into loamy waves of lavender
bringing back, carrying away,
bringing back, carrying away,
bringing back, carrying away
recollections of my mother
splashing Penhaligon’s Blenheim Bouquet
on her wrists.
Yet the warmth of springtide memories
cannot keep me from shivering –
too wet, two hours into a three-hour shift
as a docent on a garden tour
raising funds for what feeds me,
the arts.
My mother, an artist who painted gardens,
loathed real ones because of the bugs.
She resisted cultivating
what gardening taught me ever so long ago –
swat the pestiferous from your eyes
that your heart may see the rest, the Real.
Let it rain, let visitors vanish,
let your feet hurt and your back ache.
Bend like the olive sapling embraced by a barrel
and draw a smiley face in the mud.
Oh my, was I ever tired after finishing my shift as a docent at a Design House and Garden tour! And I have four more remaining — hopefully, not in the rain. Yesterday, I was staffing a hallway inside the house, where I had a blast introducing visitors to one of the most amazing rooms in the 12,000 square foot manse.
THE LAUNDRY ROOM!
Sending this poem out there with love and gratitude and prayers my words launder away any deep stains of despair — particularly for those of us up to our elbows in the muck of the US’s current regime. Somewhere I read that joy is the highest form of resistance to authoritarianism.
AMEN.
And thank you, dearest readers. Thank you, as always,
and , for a room in the Design House called Scribe, where I am so fortunate to showcase my art.