The Garden

A fertile patch of earth yields itself 

to gardeners’ hands tended 

first with joy, a joined sense of duty,

delving through the fecund and the grit,

sowing shared seeds, and mulch, and water.

Here grow the peas and there the pumpkins;

here grow the rows of sweet corn’s listening ears, 

there the tumid-hearted tomatoes on the vine.

The hope of each spring and summer alive

in what will be born of that care.

As seasons accumulate, we're instructed 

where to tread lightly, where not at all.

Fruit forbidden never grows,

untended seedlings wilt and die,

and sorrowful are these places where

silence falls in the garden.