GARDENS

         by Leslie Clark

My mother’s New Jersey garden was sentenced to a linear life.
Up against the fence line, like a row of doomed prisoners, stood
the tulips, daffodils, hyacinths–disciplined bulb blooms
of early spring, no straying onto the sparse green lawn
for them or for their companion bushes.  A spindly rose
or two, some stunted azaleas, the faint yellow hope of forsythia.
After such restraint, Mom’s riotous late blooming was inevitable.

Gardens in Virginia were domineering, their azaleas
bearing no resemblance to those of cooler climes— aggressive,
overblown lusciousness of fuchsia, flushing pink, branches scratching
at brick walls of houses, bullying one another for garden space.
Summers ripe and rank with gaudy greenery, the jungle growth of every 
flower, the tangled mass of weeds, grass that demanded 
the daily songs of mowers.  In such a setting, humans fade.

High desert flowers conceal themselves among tall grasses,
must be searched for to be seen— delicate violet stars, ground-embracing yellow.
Only after episodes of generous rain do they emerge in sheets of poppy gold 
and lupine that rivals the sky in shadings. 
One must step gingerly, eyes to ground to avoid the trampling of such tenderness.
The flowers of drier summers are girded with other-worldly thorns, 
daring desert dwellers to glean moisture from their succulence.
Here, nothing’s given free.