The Garden Poem by A.S. Wilson

Coming from around the corner and off the porch
you smile, grabbing an armful of honey gold leaves
and fling them like sacrifices into the sky
where they pause, and scattering autumnal light
begin their twirling descent past your waiting hands
to lie upon their brothers, disjointed against the earth.

Hammering clouds bellow and shadow the earth
while we sit on rockers in the depths of the porch,
bodies still except for a twining of our hands
and our feet occasionally stirring the leaves,
lying in darkness where no moving air nor light
are left as remembrances of the summer sky.

Giant bulbous grapes of water fall from the sky,
slide off the roof and land in sheets on the earth
where puddles, through clouds’ respites, capture dim moonlight
eclipsed by the yellow bare bulb hung on the porch
that shines its swinging shadows across your book’s leaves
which you turn and caress like children in your hands.

Our children, growing like weeds reared beneath our hands,
stare at electric edifices of the sky,
murmuring secret pleasures at shadows of leaves.
Their bare feet can remember the crumbly dark earth
split into rows for corn to be husked on the porch,
as they weave and dart and dash in earthly delight.

Awakening at dawn’s first hours of timorous light
the cold air constricts and pulls at our feet and hands.
Persevering, we slowly stomp onto the porch,
praying that clouds won’t betray the clear winter sky
and begin gathering broken limbs from the earth
to be devoured by embers, flames, and red-tipped leaves.

Children float about, feet kicking plumes of leaves
like a camp of bats in the fading dusk light
that sightlessly swing, skim, and dive toward the earth.
Someone lights the bonfire and its choking hot hands
grab timbers and leaves and sends them into the sky,
Floating in useless pieces to land on the porch.

We sweep the dirty porch of its dust and dead leaves
and watch the fickle sky for its furious light
and entrust in our hands to contain the whole earth.