The Gardener Poem by Linda Marie Van Tassell

He planted violets beneath her skin,
adorned her lips with an ensanguined rose,
folded her hands over what might have been,
a half-bloomed blossom that no longer grows.

The green wood whispered with November's chill.
He dug his heels into the weeping earth
and knuckled her name in syllabic shrill,
a woman unwanted, of little worth.

He would not settle for settling down
with the scarlet secret of tangled vines,
a harpy hid on the outskirts of town
where friends do not stay and truth never shines.

He never wanted more than a minute.
She wanted to hold him for all her life.
He was a knave whose heart wasn't in it.
She never knew about his kids and wife.

Her smile beamed joy like the first breath of spring.
Her voice rippled like an oracle stream.
He was angry as a scorpion's sting.
The pale death of hope relinquished her dream.

He wrapped his hands round her delicate neck,
and the wind shattered her future to end.
A moment in time, a fragment, a speck,
her sweet, young life will never reascend.

He firmly fixed his heaven to hell,
shoveled death into the grave of his heart,
tossed dirt upon her like coins in a well
and wished at once her memory depart.

Winter arrived like a dispossessed ghost.
A collarbone cleaved the glittering snow,
and in the moonlight stood a marker post
declaring a truth that we feared to know.

There's a hum in the cradle of the earth,
undulating songs of beauty and death.
Heartbeats are hindered in anemic dearth,
and the wind is holding her totem breath.

Chrysanthemums are braided in her hair.
The fractured ribs are now skeletal bones.
Two flowers fair are planted in despair
beneath the granite of angel and stones.