The Chinese Gardener Poem by Patrick VincentBrown

Just another early morning walk past
Suburban yawning houses
No different than the morning last.
Each house with sleepy pride announces

At their feet sit pretty Jersey gardens.
And the mindless clod trods through
One with a thousand beg your pardons.
With western plod he traipses into

Some eastern loves and old enchantments
With crowns of cabbage tops and rows
Of reddish roses. A dream, he thinks,
That's ushered in by oriental blows

Of wind which brushes leaves and slips
Over ringlet stalks like wedding bands
Over blushing, rosy finger tips.
Amid the cultivated patch stands

The wordless cultivator. Child sized,
She is sleek in black to the teeth.
A conical hat, bamboo-leaved and wide,
Shades the gaze of exotic eyes underneath

That fail to look or heed his remorse.
She stoops to dig with ungrowing glee.
And a stab of the earth with delicate force
Sows this garden of deeper mystery.

His mind digs with a thousand if's and so's
As the morning continues a silent call.
She digs, aloof, heedless, with a garden hoe.
Death plants seeds at less than five feet tall.

A sedge wide hat that's fixed to a point
Where seed-love growth anticipates birth.
Yet rich brown soil is balm to anoint
The many beds of subterraneal earth.