The Garden

How desolate, the flower bed,
with all the seeds we sowed, now dead.
Are all the years of loving toil,
to yield us nought but cold black soil?

Do you recall the early days,
before the simmering summer haze;
amid the virgin, landscaped plots,
we sowed our first forget-me-nots?

Oh what a time of awe, how strange,
this subtle, sublime interchange
that instigated confidence,
to tear down every boundary fence.

Our laughter filled the balmy air,
we weeded well though [e’en with care]
from time to time, a bloom was lost;
caught in a rare unseasonal frost.

But through all nature’s trials, we both
achieved an incremental growth
and learned that, though the north wind blows,
a thorn does not define a rose.

Now in the aftermath of storm,
should we abandon all reform
and walk away, throw down the glove;
are there no seeds now left of love?

Or shall we till and turn the sod,
and search our hearts, to find the pod
that surely holds a residue,
of all the beauty, we once grew?

Chris Birrane © 2012