Untitled Poem

I came to the garden and sat for a while
to look on the flowers and smell the fresh soil;

the air of my contemplation was still
and the blossoms and petals were silent.

The day was pregnant from seeds of toil
and the earth ready-made for the farmers to till,

sending in momentary gusts its rich scent,
the fragrance of birth and growth for new days;

but there in my mind a vine, wildly coiled,
contracted in blankness with nothing to say,

and so there I sat, and sat, to unbend
my coiled-up heart to curl to a smile.

The skyline was flat but out in the fields
the prince of love shaped a smile from the soil;

and I, in my blankness, stopped there to wait
and threw down my toiling to watch him ascend

the hills beyond eyesight – a sight vast and royal –
and catch my dead striving, caught in his wind.