I lay on the cool cement of the bench
and watch as the elm buds unfold into leaves
against the drifting sky.
Their birthing is framed by wires strung to connect me to the rest of the world.
Am I connected?
To what?
To whom?
I feel the cement on my back and the grass at my feet.
The ants crawl over my shoes.
Magpies scold me.
And the robins and waxwings happily sing their songs oblivious
of nearby traffic that nearly drowns them out.
I try to reconcile it;
to fit nature with the unnatural,
to justify the destruction
with the creation
as a ladybug craws across my camera.
Again I start the spring work,
and step on my baby blueberry bush as I brush away the dead leaves.
I apologize.
Am I too aggressive to grow a garden?
Does clearing away the dead leaves make the small shots feel naked?
Does raking the grass feel like a good back scratch?
Or like someone pulling out hair?
I don’t know,
because this realm is foreign to me.
In my day to day work in an office
I have become a stranger to nature,
the product of a long line of more and more urbanization,
less and less nature.
But, I do see the ladybugs everywhere –
And I cheer them on.
And celebrate the wax wings who flit from tree to tree.
I rest again and feel my back pressed against the cool cement
of the bench transplanted from another place and time,
as a reminder of what was and what did not come to be.
The sun on my face soothes
My very essence
As it kisses my cheeks.
The lilies spring to life before my eyes,
Happy in their place.
The sweet woodruff turns green against the wall.
The silence rings deeply in my ears
While the traffic of the nearby road
drones on.
The natural and the unnatural become blended.
The squirrels manage it well as they race from branch to wire
to branch
in their romantic games above the manicured lawn
and the asphalt.
Is my silence nothing to say to myself?
No conversation left?
The calmness of a satisfying day?
The stillness of indecision?
Uncertainty of what is next?
There is noise and motion all around,
Yet I feel still and small,
unnoticed in a world that races on, going no where
in all directions.
I feel astonishingly close to other lives
And yet so far apart.