Mary Anne's Garden

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.

Oakland, 27 June 1998

This is the same Mary Anne for whom Green-Eyed Monster was written. El is her roommate. It's their garden.