Home » Poems » Claire Bogdanos » Inside the Garden Gate

Inside the Garden Gate

There’s a special place that I now recall
Both secret and safe in a garden wall,
Far my favorite space when I was small
Was that wooden gate in the garden wall.
And there beneath that garden way
One million tears were washed away
And drained themselves into the ground
To gain the solace I have found.

When I’ve spied a spot with a hidden door
That may lead to the rest I’m reaching for,
The sight of a hedge by a garden gate
Is the knowledge that mellows oft too late.
One entrance in a crumbling wall
Was childhood’s fancy to recall
While shadows cast upon the ground
Did guard the peace that patience found.

The permanence I ‘d felt inside that gate
Where no words alone could ever relate
In the simple fare of my life would be
Like an endless rope of eternity.
I’ve often thought as I recalled
The lonely times when I was small,
I’d lift my wings and follow play
And swing my early cares away.


Ten thousand timeless heads bobbed in the breeze
And shook in the wind and laughed in the trees,
Amidst delphiniums all blue and pink
I’d wait for that sun to just rise or sink
To seek what hides past that garden wall
Where hollyhocks grew so bright and tall,
There beyond the pulse of nature’s lush
Life slumbered deep in a twilight’s hush.


There’s many a gate in many a wall
That has been childhood’s option to recall
When time’s swift shadow played hide and seek
My simple fears had some courage to speak.
Full many a turn has come about
Since those youthful years pursued by doubt
Where the wishing days of life would be
Bound to each one’s goal with piety.


Now much time has flown and it’s far too late
To play in the yard and swing on the gate,
For the wall is gone and there in its place
Structures of brick with no smiles on their face.
Portals of magic beckon still
With aspirations dreams fulfill,
The useful aim of one’s end should be
Some gate that waits for posterity.

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