PARTICLES to WAVES

HONEY OUT OF THE ROCK

I need to live like that crooked tree — / solitary, bittersweet, and utterly free — / that knelt down in the hardest winds // but could not be blasted away. / It kept its eye on the far horizon / and brought honey out of the rock. – Green Figs by Edward Hirsch

Tonight, in my current
kitchen, handmade wooden
cutting board on the counter
holding early home-grown tomatoes,
the small but intensely sweet
fruit I’ve spent the summer so far
saving — from transported
beetles, insects with almost
no predator — I feel a temporary
calm. The kind that’s only
calm after suffering, no matter
how minute. I mean I’m turning
46; it feels like things are upside-
down, I say, folding my tissue
in miniature, a demure square
so even my pains are intentional,
collected, tidy: I put bows on things.
I’m looking for the next place
to be in between, that’s as far
as I’ve gotten; the next
Temporary. I want a place to Be.
The sun is setting stirred coral
smoke outside the kitchen window.
The past few summers,
I’ve grown a backyard garden
outside this window, right in front
of the sunset. I knew I’d see
the first garden through;
I’d signed a year’s lease.
The last couple I wasn’t as sure
where I’d be at the end of the season,
but still I planted similarly.
This summer, I dug another garden,
tomatoes and sunflowers
in the ground, but, this time, hoping
I’d be leaving soon, I also
placed sunflower seeds in patio pots:
I’ll take some flowers with me.
The garden-rooted sunflowers
have approached their height more
slowly than the potted companions,
but they’re much heartier than my
transportable crew. I want them all
to thrive. I want to transplant the potted
flowers to the ground, even if,
because that means they’ll stay
here, no matter where I am.
But I’ve taken up all the space
that’s for now mine to take.
So I take care of the grounded
and portable gardens, knowing
as I must have known all along,
that the work is worth missing
any kind of harvest; because maybe
knowing something temporary is
as permanent as anything gets.
This, my garden, has always,
has never, been mine. And I know
it will explode in golden kaleidoscope,
in window-high heights of joy,
for bright-striped goldfinches to dine,
singing, on the bowing flowers.

 
-Laura Scheffler Morgan 7/26/18