Beauty Restored

This spring I tore out a garden past

it’s prime with a hoe and a rake and a spade

and the sweat and dust of exertion, stripped

it down to bare earth, a tangle of roots and rocks

removed, and unsure what to do with it, let it sit,

the only thing growing there the weeds I’d pluck out

in passing, tossed on the compost heap to wither and die.

 

A barren garden cries out for beauty, the green of new growth

and color, so I revived the soil with loam and peat and spread

it thick with wildflower seeds, and watered and waited, watched

the little shoots in darkness push through to sunshine,

a velvet covering of green inching upward to leaves and stalks,

one inch, then two, and higher still, little colored buds beginning,

white and yellow, pink and blue and purple, opening to flower

and turning this garden space into a tiny meadow, the buzz

of bees arriving and new flowers dancing in the breeze, beauty restored,

and with it, me, a garden past my prime, a tangle of roots and rocks.