An Ode to the Tender Gardener

Two spring poems, written one year apart, on waiting with Him.

Spring 2023

Patience Waits for Beauty

Today I bought 120,000 perennial wildflower seeds,

though I have no green thumb.

My weather-worn palms cradle destinies of

columbine, marigold, and moonflower,

mexican morning and strawberry clover,

sweet william.

My neighbor shouts across the fence,

the soil’s too parched, and I say,

perhaps there’s still some life left as

I cast them at the spring frost

and the earth pulses gently.

Beneath the maple, by the streambed,

I now wait for the blooming.

The songs are yet buried in their bosoms but

the birds have already come. 

A little water,

a little time,

and surely,

one must take.

Spring 2022

A Million Little Miracles

It’s feeling faint during your last class

but making it to 10:15, through

fifteen student presentations and a bittersweet sendoff.

It’s going to buy a water bottle to bring you back to life

when you find lime-flavored Wonder

Water and raspberry kombucha spritzers in the breakroom.

It’s the greening of May 5th – quivering buds

of pink Japanese flowering cherry trees,

through gusts grazing heaven and declaring,

I’m still standing.

You catch a glimpse of Rough Hands tenderly

planting candied tulips, spry roots

settling into earth to decorate campus for graduation. 

Yes, you have thirty papers to grade,

two portfolios to write but wet mulch

carries the scent of graduate study unfurling

on the wind this morning.