The fragrance is of nature,
it rises up upon the winds
and scatters light as petals.

She tends the garden,
she kneels to get close in,
to be a breath away
from the private lives of plants.

She is both without care
and with purpose,
to encourage desirable vegetation,
to purge the free spirits of weeds.

Some irony,
for the tending is tender
like connectedness,
the human spirit rooted in the soil,
but tending is terminal,
cultivation as selection,
as discard for the naturally occurring.

In romantic notions, she works her land,
a resonance with the ancients,
and a contradiction,
this is first a chore, the prospect of labour,
but in execution is sheer joy, the action of love.

And, she experiences harmony,
in a balance between life giving soil,
moist and crumbling,
and the blood and flesh of life,
a sacred source.

A single pulse.
As the sun smiles and
human nature laughs.
And the leaves seek attention,
their many forms,
their slavish duty to function,
and for her they flicker, bob and weave,
a primeval chorus of age old questions.
This world. The design of infinite minds?

© JFLife, 2004 (all rights reserved)