Perfect Blooms in Black and White

A lifetime of gardens.
Preparing. Planting. Feeding.
The work.
Pruning. Weeding. Mulch to protect.
It’s always the work. Hands in the dirt.
Easily poisoned. Easily wounded.
So many gardens behind you,
dead and tangled.

You are perhaps a poor gardener,
unable to tell good soil from bad,
falling in love with the same fragile flowers
that died in seasons past,
always in search of the perfect bloom
that lasts only for days.

About this poem

At times a poem has so many paths it’s hard to say it is about this. This one began as I thought about photographs of gardens at the turn of the 20th century, all that color reduced to black and white. But I wrote too slow and my mind moved too fast, and I ended up with a poem about the loves in my life and past.

When my first marriage came apart, my therapist put me back to work writing poetry. When I look back, so many of my poems were about gardens. Gardens that flourished. Gardens that died. Metaphors for love come and lost. They were a vibrant and painful batch of poems. Today, I see the garden differently, focusing less on what did not bloom than on the few moments of perfection. It keeps me going.

So like so many of my poems, a poem about love, about faith, about life’s journey. Mine, and perhaps at times, yours.

The photograph was taken at The Mount, Edith Wharton’s home in the Berkshires of Mass.

Be well. Travel wisely,

Tom