I Smelled Rosemary and Sage

I was wanting to “do some work” in our garden, right?
cus relationships need nurturing, tending, (like gardens)
flower gardens, vegetable gardens, forest gardens
wild and austere and magisterial…and because our “us” is alive and well,
growing and thriving as time measures us, draws wavery lines on today
to show where we were tomorrow.tumblr_mwp5glJ8t21rs346ao1_500

The warm air hung, lingering under October’s indulgent gaze
and I worked in joy and freedom, gardening there in our
common garden on the border of our homes abutted,
at lyric and language and Poetry writ large
with scrawling free hands in rows and stands
of flowery run-ons and adverby-veggies

then I felt a small shadow but I didn’t look, smiling beneath
my broad yellow straw hat, knowing you were near,
shinnied up that chestnut tree so shady and strong
to spy on me your sister, working on us and love…

…this was another of your mischievous games, one of your plays,
jotted sprawling on the backs of your kisses in the giddy ink of your giggles
and blown my way on ladybug wings and bumble bee songs
and spiderweb parachutes dewy and rich…
tumblr_n9g9f940Kd1qgo6q6o1_500I know you have lines for me, but it is up to me to know them first,
say them careful to not actually know them, lest they fall
like broken bells unmelodious!  And so I sang as I dug into us,
our sandy loamy we…

“I love how you understand that
uncertain restlessness at the crux of my soul!
it drives me to create, to throw the deck into the air
and reshuffle everything…
…ah, uncertain restlessness…
which makes me listen to winds differently
and hear those old feet echoing down
the long hallways of ancient seasons
long passed, and buried in that hollow echo,
the ringing harmony of many songs entwined there,
in that windy, sighing passage…

“I love also, how you know beneath
that crux I am restlessly certain,
and look at light askance and akimbo
and peer into hearts, searching for
that vitality emerging, defining itself
midst those hearts finally grown weary enough,
tired enough of doing what they are doing
to realize at last that they all along
have aggregated unwittingly and carefully
the resources of resurrection
and destiny at last arrived
and called by name and new life.

“But we, Sacred we by all means must not drift unwittingly
to lilypad patterns of musts and shoulds and oughts
but love freely instead on the high seas
of experience and understanding…and gardening,
always gardening and plucking Poems…
Of this I am sure and certain.”Image 001

I heard the silent smothering of giggles
and felt the choking swallowing of snickers
as you lurked there in the branches over head,
hung in mid air loving and tricky…

and then I smelled forever,
I smelled the incense sacred
that you always burn for us to us,
always.  I smelled rosemary and sage
remembrance and wisdom,
love and long life,
loyalty and esteem,
fidelity and yes,
(on the other side)

Cus I was wanting to do some work in our garden.

(October 7th, 2014)