This being the America
of condominiums, gravel, and pocket-handkerchief lawns,
I bought potting soil, peat moss, sand, bone meal,
and a clay pot with a rim
rolled into a fat curve.
One pot wasn’t enough.
Soon I had a village of pots.
Soon, in the obliging summer air,
lobelia and nasturtium spilled electric colours,
rosemary grew with gnarled grace,
and a lime, a lemon and a cumquat pooled white light
on river-green leaves.
I am absorbed by this small excuse for a garden
as if it were a first child
and tend where there is nothing to tend,
admire where there is nothing to admire.
It is true my garden lacks the sweep of masculine vision.
Its scale is apologetic.
Men still make the big gardens,
scheme the big schemes.
Soon I shall take to painting my garden
in watercolours so artless and innocent as to be a lie.