This Garden, This Day

A splotch of the sun’s yolk. An azure maze of sky.
Flower to fruit. Seed to vine.
Silently everything blooms,
silently everything dies.

Tracing the immortal road —
who knows how far off rest is?
The sun doesn’t know.
The sunflower doesn’t.

But he, playing hide-and-seek
with himself, looks to the horizon,
sees someone coming,
not knowing who it is.

He won’t hazard a guess.
Won’t ask, Who are you, emptying my days —
folding one moment into a moment less,
raking the dry leaves of time?

I’ll wait in my garden, gather blind fruits
in the shadow of ridged bark,
bearing the palpitant heart
of the south wind.

I’ll keep watch
(an eager house cat)
listening to the lust song of a parakeet.
I’ll echo that song.

But the stranger says, Remember
this garden, this day —
How we were lost, and will be again
when light leans on red pots

of summer: guavas ripen,
pomegranates swell with heat.
The bland taste of dust 
on the old tongue of rain.

Then, through barely lit autumn,
a wake into winter —
a pale ghost
of moonlight

on this tired bench.
When we outlast 
the seasons,
but forget our names.