AND THEN THERE WAS YOU

Things that go away
are not always meant to return,
but often they do
in the garden
where your story
is written and embraced
by both time and timelessness.

While you sleep
trees bloom to celebrate
the absolute otherness
of ambrosial spring mornings
and to atone for the undeniable
sameness of listless,
waxen winter afternoons.

Even in the murkiness of June,
you live in luminous earth.
Composted, summer gladness
oozes from you,
fresh with the morning dew.
You are the restless roots
of tireless trees.
The builder of sugary palaces
on sculpted limbs.
The clarity of fruit ready to explode
in the ecstasy of sunrise.

Who knows why an apple is an apple
when it could easily be a rose,
I suppose, like its cousin
the floribunda or tea rose or even a climber,
like the alabaster white 'Iceberg Rose'
atop the wrought iron trellis.

Or why, your beloved hydrangeas,
planted side by side with one voice,
are diverse in color,
as beautiful in difference
as a first and second child.

I love your apple tree from Israel,
not only for the clarity of the bloom
and for the globes of nectar
that float like celestial moons
on a moonless night,
but because it is a traveler like you,
at home in the poetic space
between worlds.
A true monument to a soul bouquet.

It shares a soothing shadow
and the early morning stillness
with a peach tree whose profile
has transformed into living art;
a delicately balanced mobile
of fruit destined for cobbler nirvana.

But who can forget the gnarled fig tree,
side-by-side with a hummingbird
bathing in the fountain,
both picturesque in silhouette.
Or the fattened fruit,
a pulse-beat away
from succulent ripeness
for both man and bird.

And then there is you.
The brightest light through the leaves.
The wind rippling across
clouds of white feathers.

Who can forget you.

© JOHN PISCATELLA