Aridity's Garden

Once, the vast garden
was resplendent, tended
year after year
by strict clippers attentive,

lined and
blocked off
by neat white walls...
still painted with light refinement:
pastel hues of mythology...
David slaying Goliath,
Venus new and naked
foaming from
an Italian sea

but the masters
have sailed away
to Europe, death,
or eccentric daze:

Now there grow
no neat roses
where the children played,
but rather
snapdragons, Indian paint-brushes,
and Spartan flowers
bearing red Roman thorns,
adorned with the bright thin webs
of bonsai spiders

at night no guards patrol,
but rather lines of racoons,
emerging like butterflies
from the shed's cocoon...
though a guardian still works
from eleven to noon,
holding up these acres
of "ruin"

now bees not books
spread and bless the blooms...
and purple trees of lilacs gush
where once blushing lilies were groomed