This is where we fall, sleepers scattered in the soil
A finger deep, dragged through the ground
A blessed thought in harrowed halls.
We could think of nothing else but what our patch of earth contained,
Reminded by our dirt-stained clothes of planted possibility
In tender ground, as bare as birth, a shoot emerged from beneath the earth.
Mary, Mary, tell me how your garden grows.
Tell me what it takes to come alive, to see what you have sown
Because I’ve grown into the ground and there are branches in my bones
I am overgrown.
Between two branches, a rope and tire we cast between two worlds,
Each one higher than the last.
I chose the air, chose higher still and left an Eden, found,
But in abandon, lost my grip, and shattered, chose the ground
In unkept chaos, as bare as birth, a garden, grey, of tangled earth.
I’ve been lying here too long, the branches pushing me apart where weakness showed,
But then September swept the overcast aside,
Dusted off the winter’s curse, and she cut me through like knives.
She whistled proudly her season’s song and showed me that I was alive all along.