common or garden poets #5 – Jill McKeowen inviting Irina Frolova
suburban garden song
for Irina Frolova
…songs that save us…
…the slow luscious note of gardenias
Kathryn Fry, ‘Impromptu’
the koel song has arrived, rolling
from the leafy night
as wattle bird cracks the dawn
step out
to the warming world, crimson
lanterns of bottlebrush lit
in a thousand filaments
overnight the young orb
has hung its web, renewal glistening
from awning to gardenia
on the cusp
of summer, soft as crepe, expiring
waves of perfume
to November’s purple sky
they’ll melt in time to creamy yellow
burn to bronze and fall
like cotton sheets on summer skin
the garden is for being
as we are, a daily practice
not quite finished, and when I’m gone
no-one will know the details
how I sit in the dirt pulling weeds
or digging my fingers in
with the planting of good ideas
the garden guides us
through our small mortality
adapting and enduring, says
this is how it feels to be alive
like every plant, the human body’s
impulse is to heal while moving
yet toward its end
oblivious
a blue-tongue lizard slides through
the litter of gardenia leaves
and blueberry lily knots
at dusk, vermillion cloud vibrates
in each geranium petal disappearing
to inevitable night
the roots of life
weave with worms and detritus
and insects sing the white moon
for summer’s returning arc
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