The Garden Entrusted to Us

For Leslie Talia

I am still here, as Earth tilts its head toward the sun. The daffodils came first along the shores of this lake, filled with the spirit of all lakes, where we do not imagine that water prefers one ground to another. Where water falls, life sprouts upward from death: daffodil, dandelion, honeysuckle, all fragrant.

There is no mystery on these shores, no ghost trapped in the blue mud. A quiet cottage. Peaceful neighbors. Farmers tilling the winter soil.

In stillness Borah is a mirror for the bare trees, brown and naked. Above the branches, white fades into blue as the shadows of blackwinged birds slice through the colors, separating what we think is white from what we think is blue. They might have flown higher in the sky, but they did not.

Can a farmer pray for rain? He does. But the rain giver may not give to him more freely than he does the poet, or the thief.

I have read of honeysuckle and willow trees, and what should I imagine? That they have been drawn up from the ground, called forth by water and light, to perfume the breeze, to sway their limbs gently like hair that cascades from the crown of your mind?

A heron swooped to eat a fish beneath the glassy lake, and for a moment the water walker tucked its stick legs beneath its body, ducklike, floating like a goose with a long neck and sharp beak. It was something to see, a hawk pretending to be a swan.

What mysteries do we imagine at the bottom of that lake? A coffee mug filled with baby's milk? A red wig? The leprosy of Naaman washed away?

I'll tell you what it is: It is water. Above, birds and trees. Below, fish and turtles.

But these daffodils. What can we do to stop them from growing? This honeysuckle. Why should we uproot it?

Let me tell you what I see, Talia. I see you emerging from the honeysuckle. I smell you in our bedsheets and pillows. Your bud blooms in winter. Your hair grows thick even in frost. For the rain of the spirit is love, and I have rain to give. I will water my garden, not pretending that my neighbor's wife has been entrusted to me, or John, or Bradley.

Your bloom will grow in my garden, and every other rose will be a weed.

A Beautiful Day

I will tell you it as I remember it:
We took you from the hospital door,
Swaddled in a baby carrier lined with denim,
It was warm, for March,
As we placed you in the back seat of my brother's grey Honda Civic,
Manual transmission, 1988.
There was a CD in the stereo,
And when I turned the key,
Grey smoke spurting from the tailpipe,
A song began to play:

The heart is a bloom
Shoots up through the stony ground . . .

What more do I remember?
Your smallness.
Your newness.
My inadequacy.

You are not as small now,
Nor as new
(But not as old as you think, nor me).

I wish you could feel
My sorrow:
You might accept
My love.

We had painted for you a blue crib
With white clouds.
There were spiders in the farmhouse,
And I am sorry I did not know how to be a father to a baby girl,
A day old, or 17.

I tried as only I knew
On that day, and this.

Children of God

Like a boy in a henhouse,
Is his son,
Cradling fifteen warm eggs in his arms,
Treasure laden.

Like a girl picking dandelions,
Is his daughter,
Baking mud pies in the sunlight,
Yellow-necked with perfume.

His voice calls from Zion
Let it be so:
For queens wail in sorrow,
As pharaohs drown.

Monday Anniversaries

The earth rolls around the sun,
Like a ball, spinning as it orbits.
One waltz around the heavenly light
Is called an anniversary,
A turning of a year.

But I wonder:
When did the whirl begin?
Where did the earth first stand
When mesmerized by the gravity of the sun
It danced about its orbit the first time?

When does a year begin, love,
And when does it end?
Is it meted out in the times you dance before me,
365 pirouettes in my presence?
Or is it when we return to the place we first held each other?

One year, you begin to turn from me,
The next, you face away.
The third, I see you turning back again,
And the fourth, we stand as we started,
Face to face, still rejoicing.

We all should be married in leap years
To remind ourselves that love is much more complicated
Than an anniversary,
And we lie to ourselves to pretend that we were married on a Saturday
When all who were there remember:

It was a Monday.