I come to the garden alone
in a stolen hour of summer dawn,
while the hills are still covered with traces of moonlight,
while the stars refuse to surrender the sky,
while the dew is still on the roses
and lilacs, the iris and allium,
the first perennials I’ve seen bloom in my nomadic life.
They hold the nests of birds returned to last year’s hatching ground
and the voice I hear
from the wren reminds me of a song my grandmother used to sing
in an old Baptist church a lifetime ago,
a song I lost (along with my certainty) that now is
falling on my ear
like a hum from a ghost at the kitchen counter, mixing
buttermilk biscuits with prayers long buried.
In the garden, under the dieback, shoots grow.
the son of God discloses
new life emerging from the remains of the dead,
remains that lay on the ground like a blanket
guarding live roots from the brutal frost,
and he walks with me
through daffodils, through decades,
tugs at stems that no longer serve,
clears a space for seedlings to grow,
and he talks with me
in that non-anxious tone about patient kingdoms and slow-growing vines.
“In my garden,” he says, “It all belongs.”
I sink my toes into composted ground
and he tells me I am his own.