The Chinese Gardener

Just another early morning walk past

Suburban yawning houses

       No different than the morning last.

   Each house with sleepy pride announces

At their feet sit pretty Jersey gardens.

     And the mindless clod trods through

One with a thousand beg your pardons.

       With western plod he traipses into

Some eastern loves and old enchantments

        With crowns of cabbage tops and rows

Of reddish roses. A dream, he thinks,

   That's ushered in by oriental blows

    Of wind which brushes leaves and slips

Over ringlet stalks like wedding bands

         Over blushing, rosy finger tips.

     Amid the cultivated patch stands

      The wordless cultivator. Child sized,

    She is sleek in black to the teeth.

  A conical hat, bamboo-leaved and wide,

Shades the gaze of exotic eyes underneath

That fail to look or heed his remorse.

    She stoops to dig with ungrowing glee.

  And a stab of the earth with delicate force

          Sows this garden of deeper mystery.

His mind digs with a thousand if's and so’s

    As the morning continues a silent call.

    She digs, aloof, heedless, with a garden hoe.

 Death plants seeds at less than five feet tall.

      A sedge wide hat that's fixed to a point

Where seed-love growth anticipates birth.       

         Yet rich brown soil is balm to anoint

     The many beds of subterraneal earth.