A Long Perspective

Tag: gardens

  • The Folly

    IMG_5591If I were young in Wales,

    and studying Chaucer in Swansea with students

    from Llanelli or Carmarthen or Merthyr Tydfil,

    I would hear the cleaning woman who chatted as she worked near

    my room that overlooked the gardens not the Bay.

    She would say, arms outstretched,

    “Open your arms wide to life,

    take it all in, right now,

    nothing between you and life,”

    then she would hug me breast to breast.

     

    If I were young and in Wales,

    I would go to the gardens

    my student’s black gown worn over my clothes,

    climb the tower, a “folly,” twenty steps up to nowhere

    going round and round to the pinnacle and

    stand among the tree tops and pink rhododendrons.

    On my perch, in my American accent,

    I would shout to the students

    strolling in the gardens after dinner

    (after we prayed in Latin at high table),

    “Open your arms wide to life,

    do you hear me,

    you bloody, swotting fools?”

     

    FEWalls

  • Jack London’s Beauty Ranch, Glen Ellen, Sonoma Mountain

    IMG_6493Once, in the garden of Jack London’s home,

    I sat so still thinking of him

    that a wren landed on my head

    thinking I was a statue, perhaps,

    a place to stand and survey the land

    for his kind of food, berries or bugs,

    while I thought of Jack London –

    how he didn’t wait for inspiration

    but wrote every day

    insisting the words appear on the page,

    those stories that ripen as the berries in his garden

    as alive as the birds getting ready to feed.

     

    FEWalls