THE CONSTANT GARDENER

Each day at dusk, in need of quiet affirmation, a constant gardener hops
from branch to strand of electric cable outside our patio to remind me
of the power of one plangent note riffing ’cross currents of sugarcane tops
while crisp nor’easters nudge pacifist clouds towards a phalanx of mahogany,
tamarind and coconut.  I find most things bearable then: the civil
machinery has laid down its fusty head, the workers in limbo fretting
at the bit this millennial generation will splay and flail in their fearful
beds, perhaps sleep a dreamless sleep furrowing deep, grinding teeth, whetting
their taste buds for grand adventure. Downstairs, the boys are busy avoiding homework;
my lover is washing bugs and grease off the car; the evening’s meal simmers
contentedly on the old gas range—a feast of chicken stew (or is it pork
chops?) laced with homemade seasoning—inducing hunger. The first star shimmers
over the cement plant; its weak light makes the billowing smoke seem magnificent;
your image starts to blur now and then.  Living by some kind of feverish creed
where life is immediate, every routine thing hated, you balk at becoming old, absent.
This is the accumulation of minutes, hours, years where the patina of unresolved need,
the slow burn of coddled desires will no longer wait politely for a convenient time to pass
into oblivion or disuse.  The evening’s draft is marked with countless visions and revisions
so that you cannot recall in any detail or urgency what was first disturbed, when last
you felt tectonic plates shift an earth. Are these seismic waves or involuntary frissons?