Lifting the garden stepping stone, I reveal
those who burrow back to their darkness.
Grubs that eat what I carefully planted.
They do their work hidden but I
must do my work too. I’m sorry.
What is really revealed in this poem?
Irises in my mother’s garden bloomed
for Mother’s Day and I brought them
to my own garden where they bloom
later in May in all the colors
of childhood past, present and hopefully future.
but you spend this Sunday with me,
on the spring garden bench reading poems
from your small hand-sewn fascicles, never published,
but for here and now, where God
preaches – and the sermon is never long.
This poem recalls – and borrows lines – from Emily Dickinson, whose poems I was reading this morning.
Emily Dickinson,
poet of the interior life,
poems were written quietly in a room of her own,
often hand-stitched in small volumes,
then hidden in a drawer.
She died without fame,
only a few poems were published in her lifetime, and those anonymously.
All of the poems were later published
at first altered by editors or publishers according to the fashion of the day,
rather than in the unique style that Emily intended for them.
The volume I was reading is The Poems of Emily Dickinson: Reading Edition
of garlic in October – a family tradition.
Hardneck ones underground in fall will sprout
in spring after sheltering all winter long.
Not so different from me these days,
with my papery coverings to protect me.
The butterfly flapping here in my garden
might be somehow changing something in China.
Perhaps, this is not chaos but synchronicity.
Far away, a child watches another butterfly
and is thinking about me writing this.
In chaos theory, the butterfly effect is the sensitive dependence on initial conditions in which a small change in one state of a deterministic nonlinear system can result in large differences in a later state.
The term, “butterfly effect,” is associated with the work of Edward Lorenz. His metaphorical, not literal, example was that a tornado’s exact time of formation and the exact path it takes could be influenced by minor perturbations such as the flapping of the wings of a distant butterfly several weeks earlier.
A very small change in initial conditions can create a significantly different outcome. It’s a theory I consider valid for much more than the weather.
Ode for Stanley in His Garden
It’s early for irises, Stanley. But today
daffodils are shouting yellow and white calls
to me from my garden, “Come outside!
Leave that poem for tonight! Touch blooms!”
Maybe it was you, Stanley, calling me.
Poet Stanley Kunitz was also known for his Provincetown, Cape Cod garden which I was able to visit when I spent a week in Ptown at a poetry-writing workshop.
Writing the Day 