The Garden

A poem for Sunday

When my mother could no longer walk
from the kitchen to the yard,
the garden became my chore.

Early summer, my hair grown long, my blue sweatshirt
coiled in a basket
on the lawn.

I stood on the wooden bench in the garden
in the evenings, filling the dark soil until it swelled
with water, then sank back down.

What I liked best was how each thing
gave to another: The leaves of a large plant
shaded the blossoms of its brother.
Water passed from the soaked ivy
to the parched flowers in the pots below.

That small garden was all one thing.
The death of a single plant is a tragedy.
My father swept the steps.
My sister sat beside my mother.
Somewhere inside my mother’s lung
lived its cancer,
glowing inside her like a coal.

So as to heal it, I tried to come to it
with love, as I did the rose
in its black pot
and the wild evergreen
nodding in the spray,

and as I also tried
to come to God,
standing before the wall
of ivy, like a flower
bowing in a heavy rain.