Behind my home there is a garden
of exquisite flowers glittering in the light.
They are planted by the hands of strangers,
as they turn into friends,
turn into hopeful lovers.
Each flower is unique and precious,
Each reflecting the hands which sowed.
I walk through the garden daily,
lovingly caressing each petal of glass.
I tend them with my gentlest of attention,
for the unspoken plea upon the planting,
entrusting these bejeweled treasures to my care.
Though there was no solicitation of my making,
the planters leave the heart shaped seedlings,
buried in the safety of my garden.
To remain beautiful and radiant,
the blooms obligate constant care -
to keep them from drowning in autumn rain,
or wilting in the heat of summer sun.
I am their fence against adversity,
their hedge defending from nature's roar.
Though planted by another,
I am the gardener, keeper of the flowers.
I sing to them sometimes,
the songs of gardeners past,
who with their last hours living,
instructed the gardener in their footsteps,
about the calloused work of the gardener's task.
It's my alto voice that echoes now,
with words that are all my own,
coaxing the blossoms to grow strong,
and bud into their intended majesty.
Even when fatigue haunts my halting steps,
loaded down with great sorrow and pain,
and the weight of a lifetime spent alone,
I still make time to maintain my garden.
There is no rest for the drained gardener,
no solace in the raging storm.
But I was born to be a gardener,
to be shackled by the chains of weariness,
the gardener is created to bear.
Yet despite my best intentions,
sometimes I kept a flower to close,
and in my protecting clutches,
the glass flower suddenly broke.
Other flowers shattered on their own,
ready to move on from my care,
and still more fragmented
as their planters lost trust in their gardener.
Shards of others followed,
to my everlasting despair,
because the planter never told me,
they had placed their flower in my care.
With each loss of flower,
my own gained another fractured crack,
weakening my wells of power,
to tend the flowers still in bloom.
But I cannot stop to hold the pieces
of my flower tightly in place.
The flow of planters keep coming,
for the tending providence bestowed on the gardener.
