Benediction to the Garden

Benediction to the Garden

In this garden, safe and sound,

I played with the fairies as a child;

From the arbor trellis to the ground,

were beautiful flowers, planted and wild.

Through the years as I did grow,

the garden, also, was going through change.

A strength and beauty did always show~~

the enchantment of which was kind of strange.

‘Cause in the moonlight as fairies danced,

and Mother Nature played songs of love,

Its floral and boxwood had lovers entranced

and ‘ole Devil Moon winked from above…

The arbor was joined by another, yet newer

trellis to coax the sheltering vines.

The herb scents were many, the floral fewer

but identified by the strategic signs.

My garden of years holds unspoken magic,

but what do plants & bushes & marble hinder?

Just breaking its spell would be, --oh, so tragic!

The secrets it keeps; treasuring their splendor!

It stiffens against cold, with rain it splashes,

while tending and weeding and watering still—

The cycle ends and begins with ashes,

From the garden's Body and Soul and Will.

Written in tribute to the herb and flower garden of the late Helen Doumas (my grandmother)
of 709 Hanover Street, Fredericksburg, Virginia, ...and in tribute to the late
Charles Parke Pierson, also of Fredericksburg.

Alas! the memories harbored in that garden's cloistered secrets...it held me in its arms from
1954 to 2005.

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