Garden Poem

a poem to celebrate spring & national poetry month

Hello friends,

Happy April! It is still a strange, heavy time we are living in, but I hope that in the midst of all that is, Spring is still showing up to surprise you, guide you, encourage you.

I’ll be starting seeds indoors next week (in case you’re wondering, I am NOT an expert at this, but love the practice and adventure of seeing if these little beings come alive in my home), and have bought the season’s first bags of potting soil and plants like lettuce, kale, sugar snap peas, and an array of flowers.

April is National Poetry Month, and I’m sharing with you a poem I wrote about four years ago. I remember exactly where I was when I wrote it— in the garden, of course, at sunset while we were living in Atlanta. It was one of those visceral, lovely moments when the words just spilled out of me.

I am so grateful for those moments.

I hope you enjoy these words as we lean into the coming, blossoming months.

Garden Poem

I came outside to listen, but all could I hear was noise--

the hum of the car next door,

an audiotape blaring through closed windows.

I thought I might hear from the seeds in my garden bed,

but they were quiet.

Instead, my dog whines at dogs passing by.

The crickets begin to sing, telling me an age-old story, I'm sure.

The birds are quieter tonight than they were this morning,

and I understand that I am still practicing how to notice--

how to be aware;

how to hear the cricket

when the rest of the world is speaking.

But it would seem that the trees speak, too,

even in the stillness, and I see up toward the sky

a baby bird bobbing left to right in a nest,

waiting for its parents to bring home dinner.

I'd never noticed before.

Mosquitos are flocking to my skin-- early in March,

early because heat finds us in winter nowadays

and makes the earth hotter than it should be.

I look up again and I can't find the baby bird,

because maybe it was only meant to be found in that one, sacred moment.

I wonder, often lately, what the birds think of us--

what the hawks soaring overhead wonder about the gossiping, grouchy,

sometimes gracious people below.

I never noticed before that the large pine tree to my right curves a little

the higher up her trunk you look.

She knows she's beautiful, I think.

She knows she's wise.

A cardinal enjoys an evening meal at the bird feeder,

and I'm close enough that I can hear the seeds crack in his tiny orange beak.

It is a gift to notice.

And it is there that I realize, maybe the seeds did bring me here, after all.

Maybe the best place to view the world in this very moment is from the ground,

at the edge of the garden, at sunset.

I go inside and the husky asks with his eyes what I've seen.

I silently say as I scratch his head,

Anything and everything, Pup.

Anything and everything.

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