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Terry’s Garden, in Winter
Winter Garden
When I travel
I search for public gardens,
to visit, and to amble.
But this is winter,
a docent tells me,
There is not much to see here now.
As it is
in my own garden,
I tell her.
Except in the early morning light
when outside my study window
I consider a still-life, in sepia tones.
Our lawn, encrusted with hoarfrost,
is now cloaked, silver glazed
as if gilded for commemoration.
I am certain of this,
as I walk under a cobalt-blue sky.
I listen to my breathing,
and hear the crunch of turf under foot.
The Clematis, with vines now browned and brittle,
–from life tendered in an extravagant summer offering–
covers our arbor,
co-mingling with canes of Antique Garden Roses
still defiantly nurturing the remnants of earlier blooms,
while perennials have deferred to the weather
and lay strewn upon the ground,
now a carpet of exhausted supplicants.
Stillness is not just a word
in a winter garden.
It is a space,
where the air, literally, drapes,
as if there is nothing pressing,
nothing to resolve,
nothing to undertake,
except to wait. And perhaps,
to rest.
And I smile, and ask myself, So what is next
on this winter day,
when there is not much to see?
5 Comments
>quite lovely. and what did you see on this winter day…
and when does your new book of poetry come out?
>Beautiful…that winter can give us a moment to pause…
>Your poetry touches me much like Mary Oliver's! Soft, thoughtful, provocative, sensual, and real, each word chosen with great care/.I hope 2010 is the year for Terry Hershey's book of poetry. It is easy to tell that is where your heart is.
>My winter garden prompted this poem:
Winter Dance
My garden in Winter
confronts me with my
obvious neglect, my
failure to put it to rest.
Instead I lavished care
on those plants I
brought inside, the ones
in pots, the snowbirds,
who winter where it's
warm. The garden
sleeps but portions of
it badly need a trim;
bare branches, sticks
adorned with brittle
brown leaves that
catch and drop the
snowflakes that swirl
around them as the
frigid wind moves
all of Nature in a
Winter dance.
by Terry Waggle
>Winter dance indeed. Very nice. And the dance goes on, "in spite of our neglect."