The Garden

When my mother could no longer walk

from the kitchen to the yard,

the garden became my chore.

Early summer, my hair grown long, my blue sweatshirt

coiled in a basket

on the lawn.

I stood on the wooden bench in the garden

in the evenings, filling the dark soil until it swelled

with water, then sank back down.

What I liked best was how each thing

gave to another: The leaves of a large plant

shaded the blossoms of its brother.

Water passed from the soaked ivy

to the parched flowers in the pots below.

That small garden was all one thing.

The death of a single plant is a tragedy.

My father swept the steps.

My sister sat beside my mother.

Somewhere inside my mother’s lung

lived its cancer,

glowing inside her like a coal.

So as to heal it, I tried to come to it

with love, as I did the rose

in its black pot

and the wild evergreen

nodding in the spray,

and as I also tried

to come to God,

standing before the wall

of ivy, like a flower

bowing in a heavy rain.