Zen Ruination Part 3: Horticulture

 

I spend a little time each day

Before the Sun shows its face,

Speaking sweet words at the flowers

I planted in our backyard’s oft-neglected garden.

Bent over them, shining my cell phone’s light to aim my voice in the appropriate directions.

I practice my intonation,

Even pacing

inflection up.

Dulcet tones

The tapping of the clavas underneath the smooth 2/4 love in my song.

My eyebrows raised,

Loose body language.

Willing them to continue growing.

To grow up safe

Without bends in the stem

To know they are valuable and don’t need to compare themselves to the others.

Each one

Blossoming and arcing towards the growing light.

Each one,

More beautiful than the moment before I shined the unsparing light from my iPhone 11 plus.

Before now,

I would bark out commands

Grow straighter!

Blossom more effectively!

A drill Sergeant

Demanding results without exception.

As you know,

I’ve burned everything I loved

Away from Me.

In the shrill demands

the impatient scowls

The disappointment

That oozed from my pours.

Each has left Me.

You have left Me.

Maybe these flowers I planted,

When You told Me you were leaving, told Me that I kept You down

Under water and struggling-my hand firmly and figuratively on your head-bubbles screaming without interruption,

These things I have tried to talk into becoming something other than the weeds

Of our home’s ruined garden,

Maybe I’ll speak the words in the right combination and unlock my fingers from their collective, and figurative, scalp. They’ll bubble up through the surface and I’ll tell them how sorry I am. How much I’ve learned. How proud I am to have witnessed them grow.

Maybe I won’t fail them

This time.