The Garden

Ten-tongued flowers
Make jungles in hourglass urns
That smell of pigeon water
And rain with grey lichen
Lining their hips in inky colonies.

Blue dragonflies arrive
Around the golden pond
With lily leaves in the middle
And grasses at the rocky edge:
The sound of water falling
Reaches us with the wind chime
Gently glittering.

The rusted garden roller grows into the hedge
Behind pink and white roses
Where bees slowly hum carrying heavy sacks of yellow
On their thighs.

The eternal ant makes its way across the crevasses
Of the patio and up a leg
Of the shattered wooden bench by the barbecue
That still smells of yesterday, as the moon is heaved
Up on strings of sunlight
To guide us to tomorrow.

August 2000