White house, brown woodwork, red roof tiles, brick chimney; maypole with ribbons all woven around it; afternoon sunlight through trellis and ivy; flower bed purple and orange and scarlet; wrought iron bench with cobwebs aplenty; churchbell strikes six with a faraway sound; tiny pink roses, fuschia, honeysuckle; part of the fence looks about to fall down; rustling of leaves from a breeze that's too gentle to ring the rusty windchime; robins tweeting and chasing each other in pairs; stop-and-go swirl of flies braiding the air. Some parts show evidence of an intelligence shaping and digging and planting to plan. Some parts look wild, overgrown and abandoned, nature reclaiming as much as she can. Somehow, this marriage of care and neglect, this interpenetration of will and wildness at the border of order and verdure, embodies a basic human desire for heaven; trowel in hand, Michaelangelo's Adam reaching out to touch a green and leafy god.
for Mary Anne & El
Oakland, June 27, 1998
Copyright ©1998,2020 Howard A. Landman
This is the same Mary Anne Mohanraj for whom Green-Eyed Monster was written. El was her roommate. It’s their garden.
Energy and Time 