Gardens

The formal landscape stands
ordered monument to mastermind and hands

Each subservient row
disciplined by shear and hoe,

In organic symmetry, sculpted sphere and line,
Not for love of life, but devotion to design

was this infertile illusion crafted
every uniform blade to one will drafted

bearing no largesse to riotous leaf or unruly root,
the master gardener's tyrannous vision absolute.

There are other gardens
whose verdant chaos is infested with creative possibility.
Borderless communities of bright souls, they blend, compete, complement, propagate. Fertile diversity caresses eye and cheek and olfactory, embracing with equal passion prima dona poppy, dusky humus, sultry fern, honest grass, each sworn only to Mendel's oath of self-expression.  There is no caretaker here, only caregivers, inconspicuous in quiet devotion to serve, not control, to nurture with extravagant love
each unplanned form and unconscious, self-absorbed delight
for the sheer love of life.

© 1996, Sanford C. Shugart

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