A Hopeful Thing

It’s a hopeful thing to build a garden, isn’t it?

To plant what needs watering
To build what needs you love.

Even though you might have to leave it
Every once in a while-
to travel, or for sickness.

Even though rains might come, or might not.
Though sun may scorch,
Birds might bend,
Bugs might break.
To start anyway, what might seem so
Valuable
and vulnerable.

Planting limp greens first,
only to see flowers shoot up
and stand tall.
Right where those tired greens once were.

Now they stand at attention
In happy, commanding way.

Then one afternoon storms come,
And they are mostly laid bare,
Bent by wind and pummeling rain.
I don’t wish I hadn’t planted.
I don’t wish I had enjoyed them more.
I did, both, happily.
I just wish that nothing good
Would ever have to end.

I know that is not possible
Or probable.
But still I pine
For endless days
And sun-soaked summers,
For tall and fearless blooms.

I know they will come again next year.
I know they will bloom, again.
All will be made right-
in my life, or after,
Even if not in this garden.

I know it will be.

Yes, isn’t it strange,
To tend to what cannot tend you back,
To love what cannot seem to stay,
but blesses in it own way and turn, just the same.

To be able to
give life to something that
No one else can understand,
To plant a tender seedling or more,
with your own two grubby hands.

To be dirty and delighted
By the very same thing
That doesn’t have words to ask for
What it really needs,
But needs, just the same.
Just the same as you.

It’s a curious thing,
To give your time and attention
To things that will someday go,
Only in tender, loving hopes
that also
it will grow.

I am a garden and
I have a garden too

Do you?