The Gardener

This day is hot and bright and fills my weary eyes, and while sleep is gone it lies in wait. The years have gone and the weeds have come. The dandelions are hard hot yellow in the sun. This place I loved and here I see my Eleanor, who turns to me, to touch my arm and softly say, Do not let them see your pain. I have no trust in any move and I feel all aches. And every step I do take is an avoidance of a fall. I feel her laughing warmth about me, I feel the perfume, the lavender of her, or is it remembrance, a wish from my heart. I see the lavender, then, at my feet, and tears wet my eyes. Ravens in the tall pines, the sons and daughters of the sons and daughters of the ravens that she loved, the tricksters of this world, the noisy comics. Remembrance past, I lift my head and see the apple tree With hoary bark and flaked around about. Twisted leaves, curled browned and scabbed, The tree a shadow of its former self. Then through the weedy grass, the fire pit overgrown, air filled with childish voices and games they played with sweet Eleanor. About me all for a moment a whirl of dark and musty memories then comes back the ragtag garden of today. Here is a broken tree, there all plants so out of place. The dried out stems from other years of daisies. Is hard to weed when bones all creak and sound to stoop and lower down, to reach, to touch the ground. Today I try, and it is done, To sit in lawns tall grass with weeds beneath. Reach to touch the lavender, take some weedy grass and pull. The children said that they would come today. They live their lives, but still I wish them here. O Eleanor you were my one. In all the world you were my home, the single one. It is colder now, has sun gone awry but shadows still so sharp, The lavender perfume so heavy. Like a drug. My face in the pillow of lavender, Prickles my face and the bees are loud. Eleanor's breast. I see her clearly now. My eye, near sees a lavender flower Why is my head here? All the world shrinken to a flower All light, the simple light of life. Its so dark, but the light is there. Our children playing, the ones who didn't come. So still now. Why now so quiet. No blood rushing in my ears. The children fading ...don't go, stay. Just the life light glimmering like a candle in the dark. Watching it. Its cold ..... Eleanor?.... Its warm again, soft slow, no beating, never has it been so still. I reach for the life light and sigh it into nothing.