Walled Garden Poem by Linda Hepner

There are no bounds in my walled garden.
The wall is there, white, covered in bougainvillea,
Crimson, purple, flowering non-flowers.
The plum tree and the orange with its blossom flanks it,
The lemon, competition for the biggest
Roundest lemons in creation, bursting with juice and seeds.
A fig tree, accident of birth and leaning searchingly
For freedom from his citrus sisters arcs like a bow
And promises one day another swing for dangling.

The grass stealthily sends its runners
Into the fertile land of musky soil,
The daffodils and freesias shoot up on the lawn,
Tricking my feet.
Roses, old relatives each with her own name and fragrance
Sit comfortably, warning me with thorns not to dig deeply
Into the past. I leave the patio
Armed with my shears and walk on precious grasses
Eyes sharp and snip each smug shoot with a sudden clip
Then gather the petalled branches for our selfish joy.

Statis is here, blue as the azure sea and bringing thoughts
Of palisades along the ocean, windswept salty sounds of pelicans
And seagulls swooping, sudden death
For fish, those darting beams beneath the waves.
And here our pond: a family of koi, grown from little bowls
With goldfish, triumphs long ago of children bearing prizes.
Now they accept the wall we built them circling, circling,
Weaving between the weeds and rocks and sad
But never knowing why.
But I
Within my walled garden know these walls
Open a space that liberates, that lubricates
My mind and heart, my reaching for the wild places
We can see from here. Over the roofs,
Over the trees, far to the west,
Up rise the mountains, they are mine
As is the sky studded with planets
And the park a mile away where antsized golfcarts
Carry their busy passengers, leaving the hill
Green as the Sussex Downs, as a slope in Pennsylvania.

The days of our playing children are now gone;
The swingset pulled to pieces leaves a scar
On the sweet lawn, but soon
The fig tree will oblige and a new delight appear:
A waterfall, for grandchildren to splash and spray
Each other when they run and laugh, voices of long ago
When their own parents ran and leaped and called
Whilst we lolled in an old blue swingseat to and fro
With cats and rabbits, birds and new won fish.
Now we have water music, rocks to climb,
Orchid trees and pomegranate, purple pink,
Flavors from temples, palaces and distant myth,
Our ancient tortoise standing by our feet,
Cats that recall our Ur-Cat, noble beast
Whose bones lie deep beneath the Aloe plant
Where we sang dolefully and children laughed
To see their parents weep.

All this is in my garden’s boundaries.
The walls can not keep in my traveled thoughts;
No unicorn is here, no psaltered hymn,
No binding garland, drops of mystic blood;
My eyes see far, my ears hear songs
Melting from ice-bound pasts here, here where
They never froze, my skin slides easily upon the grass
Lying all afternoon, with book in hand,
Another book perhaps but still the same
Holding and turning and laying down and then
A long sleep in the late sun and the shade.