A New Gardening

A New Gardening

Michael David Jones

The song is leaking glee, upbeat
and reveling in the beauty of another.
It’s a song about a lover,
full of sap and smiles
and metaphors of soft summer sunlight.
It’s a new phrasing of an old cliche,
no better now, but still sung anyway,
another voice joining a long tradition.

I listen, a poet seeking shelter
from a superficial world
that binds the nerves in wire
and wonders why hearts fry
with the flip of a switch.
For the moment, the shade
of this tune will suffice,
momentary rest.

It is true that none can choose
the age in which they live.

In another time, I may have been a gardener
charged with tending to the trees,

but in this one, I am an amateur electrician,
bringing insulated pliers to bear
on the weeds of the moment.
It is an act of small-scale rebellion,
snipping away at the wires
wrapped too-tightly around soft hands.

This new pruning demands patience,
slow and repeated practice,
a bucket lowered into the well
of old disciplines long thought dead.

Alternating currents bite,
momentary flashes of pain,

a popping sound that rounds the shoulders,
even after years of distance.

Someday, things will be right again.
By then, I’ll be gone,
scattered into some aging compost,
soil in a pot—or better yet—
a garden where desert fruits grow.

In those days, I pray that new hands
find care for the work, freeing
dead branches from living things,
that they might bloom again in full.

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Michael David Jones
Poet & Educator

Michael has been published in Ekstasis, Clayjar Review, Solum Literary Magazine and elsewhere. He is pursuing an MFA at the University of Nevada, Reno.

Photography by SOsmany Mederos