(c) 2007 mykl g. sivak

the garden

All flesh is like grass and all its glory is like the flower of grass. 
The grass withers, the flower falls.                                        -- 1 Peter 1:24

The summer of my grandfather’s death
I planted and cultivated the garden in his yard.

In past years, it had been for him a wellspring
of contentment and satisfaction, but in his final days
he had grown too tired for the work and so I did it for him.

Those days, I planted seedlings, watered, fertilized the crops
and he would watch me, sit at the edge of the rows on an old lawn chair,
wearing his large brimmed straw-hat that cast a meshwork shadow
across his small shoulders.

He watched silent, or gave me quiet advice on how to do things right,
with sentences of few words and shallow breaths, and drowsy gestures
that moved at the elbow and not at the wrist.

When he died in late summer, the garden went neglected,
fruits first plumped red then withered on the vines,

and as autumn approached, the tall grassy weeds
and wilting dried stalks became a blatant metaphor
for the passing of the man.

That winter, the desiccated remains of the garden
plants lingered, and when my grandmother died
the following spring they stood there still,
amidst a mass of tall parasitic weeds.