A blessing of a garden, sunken low in the grass
Amongst the bushes that are the aphids' homes
Where the peonies and the zinnias jostle for room
To sink themselves into the chocolaty loam.
Walnut trees grow lazily, skimming the horizon
Shelled fruits littering the grass-choked ground
A small wren flitters about, skirting the shrubs
And picks up small kindling that lies scattered around.
A derelict fountain rises up from the earth
Moss's matted curls are now shattering its form
A limestone angel once bearing a pitcher
Now weathered and broken as if by a storm.
The tamarisks whisper secrets twisted
By winter winds into forgotten tongues
Unpruned dry brambles pierce their way
Into Mother Nature's dessicated lungs.
A rusted fence wends, curls, its way around
Languid and steady along the cobbled way
Sealing in this tumultous green tangle
That within its bounds grows yet astray.
Though the ochre primroses push up their scents
The entire garden smells musty, forgotten
The musky earthly scent and floral waves
Underlies something proliferating, rotten.
Through all these plants and crabby grass
An old oak tree lies twisted, stunted
Stooped over by age, trunk knotty and wrinkled
The sharp grooves of its bark now blunted.
It seems to know the ancient wisdom
Witnessing the coming and going of men
Across aeons long departed, and discarded
As time's wheel spun again and again.
But when the crickets stop their chirping
And garrulous wind is blustering far away
If you listen closely to the creaking branches
You may hear what he has to say-
"
I am the old oak of the garden green
And I have seen much on verdant plains
I have witnessed the rise of ancient suns
And the breach of the torrential rains.
Now I am knock-kneed and knobbly
And my trunk is beaten down by time
Yet I've bathed in the mist of thousand winters
And bore witness to many a crime.
A hollow juts deep inside my trunk
It has a dark pool where weasels hide
Many have sheltered in my boughs and nooks
And explored the breadth of my inside.
During the fall, my leaves break off
Into lacy skeletons adorning the floor
As my stripped branches reach, aspiring
To reach the sky's heights and explore.
In my youth, I was stately and tall
Singing a lullaby beseeching longevity
Now as my leaves fall and stories grow long
I see age should be limited by brevity.
Yet I must trudge on across this time
As this garden slowly fills with deaths
And each season brings fresh collapses
With each of the wind's new breaths.
Once when I was young, tall and bright
All colors hid in my leaves, confided in me
Now I am dulled, strong but stymied
But the rot festers below like a Stygian sea.
Few denizens see that the garden is dying
Like a war that hides itself underground
A sarabande of murky dancing death
That creeps beneath the surface all around.
Soon, this will be gone, and cockroach and rat
Will claim this as a land for their own
A mutual choke into nothingness' void
Time for dark usurpers of nature's throne.
Every year these flowers come and go
Tittering in the sun and discussing every thought
In this rot, each year I hoped they'd keep
They'd keep, yet I knew they'd not.
My body on this earth is bent and folded
Like a fluttering flag in a passing breeze
I tell my tale and hope for the future
A land where the most revered are the trees.
I'm sure questions are dancing on your tongues
Pirouetting to unbind themselves from thought
But now it is my time to leave my wisdom
Do make sure I am never forgot.
Goodbye, sweet garden, I wind to the sun
The kernel of eternal life is abating
And the heart of the wood that beats within
Is now unsteady, failing, pulsating.
I shall now knead gnarly dirt, my leaves will fall
To bless the land in their swansong's dance
While I will bend further, collapsing
In death, my final broken stance.
"
The oak falls silent, the garden breathes
Like a moment of respect to his life
And all the deep wisdom that he had collected
Amongst eras of warfare and strife.
The sky curdles and sours up above
As if it too, is mourning today
The thickets all wail in an elegy
And the flowers all seem to bend away.
The raptured mountains echo their sorrow
As they mark the oak's name into every brook
The word of his demise spreads across nature
Spread across the world by the chinook.
A tired, flat, periwinkle silence
Descends over the garden, now bleak
A stalwart of the olden days has fallen
And the grasp of its roots rendered weak.
You wonder what brought the rot to this land
The one that wipes out all these plants
What the oak tree feared would ruin this patch
And to all instant death grants.
You pick up the shovel and begin to dig
Half a foot deep into the angry grass
And hoping you find the source of the death
So all this strife would someday pass.
After an hour of toiling in the sun
Your shovel hits metal, and you pull it out
A corroded lead safe is leaching into the ground
Spreading its poisonous metal about.
The old oak, now silent in death
Creaks and rustles in the air
And you think you see the faintest bend
In its squat form bent up for prayer.
The hollow seems to widen its mouth
And two small cracks appear on its face
It seems to resemble a smiling mouth
As a blessing for reviving this place.
The wishes of the oak, a garden saved
You pick an acorn off the ground
Making a hole in the earth you put it in
And pour fresh water all around.
Soon the oak's child will bear its wisdom
You think as you walk away
And the tales that it tells in the garden
Will now be expanded day by day.
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