Who Loves a Garden finds
Within their soul Life’s Whole²
I have begun to Plant thee – and will
Labour to make thee full of Growing³
Some pour their Verse from Water Cans
Scanning Verse teaches you to Scan the Crops⁴⁵
I Part Earth’s folds with a searching finger & Yield⁶
May I a Small House and a Large Garden have⁷
I put my Hands into the Ground – and they
Take Root & grow into a season’s Harvest⁸
A simple Garden – with Acres of Sky⁹
Without Plants I cannot Grow –
Without Flowers I do not Open¹⁰
¹ Octavia Butler, Parable of the Sower
² Louise Seymour Jones, Who Loves a Garden
³ William Shakespeare, Macbeth
⁴ Vladimir Mayakovsky tr. George Reavey, At the Top of My Voice
⁵ George Eliot, Middlemarch
⁶ Audre Lorde, A Woman/Dirge for Wasted Children
⁷ Abraham Cowley, The Wish
⁸ Wendell Berry, Song in a Year of Catastrophe
⁹ Cat Stevens, Into White
¹⁰ Mary Ruefle, Poem in Which I Explain Myself