Stillness

Garden

By: Charles Giuliano - Jul 04, 2019

Stillness

Dense neighborhood
Modest homes
Mill workers mostly
Walked to work
When cotton was king
Long since abandoned
Slipped into ruin
Their jobs went south
Or far far away
Now quite affordable
Artists moving in
With sweat equity
Enough for a Monk
So it would seem
Down steep steps
From wood to cement
Overgrown with weeds
Decades of neglect
Approaching from rear
Below a platform
Newly constructed
Pressure treated planks
Edge to edge
Once quite tight
Now thin cracks
Months to dry
Letting rain seep through
A place for stillness
There will be a fence up there
Moon shaped gate
Pointing to bamboo
It will grow so high
Measured with his hand
Like other perennials
Naming each one
Mostly shade plants
Locked in by homes
Casting long shadows
Just three hours of sun
Enough to survive
Endure brutal winters
Our fleeting lives
Brief flickering candles
Tiny flames of fame
Hope and dreams
Bashed and battered
In his back yard
A time and place
To be calm
A bench here and chairs
Over there
Seeking solace
Come rain or shine
Tide and time
Wafting waves of memory
Return to Eden
Where it all began or
Under the banyan tree
Each in our way
A row of hostas
Old and quite huge
Rescued from a neighbor
Split and planted
Along the steps
Recalling Candide
I blurted out
Ever the professor
Groping for meaning
Enduring so many calamities
Turks and an earthquake
Rocked Lisbon in 1755
God’s will Pangloss said
Best of all possible worlds
Inquisition’s auto-da-fé
Come what may
Tending one’s own garden
My friend like Voltaire
Remained quite calm
With nothing to say
Me slip sliding away

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Reader Comments

"Charles my friend. Again you touch the gentle souls of your many admirers, who understand the simple pleasures in life as do you.. I wouldn't sully the sublime reverie of your poem other than to say Well Done, my friend."

Posted By: Jack Lyons on 07-11-2019, 09:58 pm
"How perfect that I walked back across the street after visiting this garden to sit at my computer and read this. Beautiful poem, Charles. Thank you."

Posted By: Galen on 07-08-2019, 02:28 pm
"And still we go on, salvaging what we can, out of the ruin, holding on to dreams, seeking that place of stillness, a place of healing. Deeply moving poem , deeply felt. The best we can offer..a labor of love. Thank you, Charles."

Posted By: Wilma Rifkin on 07-05-2019, 12:02 am
"How apropos, as I'm on a short break from doin' just that, having spent previous couple hours, weeding, hiling, mulching. potatoes."

Posted By: jim silin on 07-04-2019, 04:01 pm
"I wonder the source of the Jim Jacobs Whitman quote-- specifically, and entirely."

Posted By: Stephen Rifkin on 07-04-2019, 03:35 pm
"Thanks Jim! And, Charles, ‘stillness’ is presence. ??"

Posted By: Jane Hudson on 07-04-2019, 02:53 pm
"This is what you shall do: Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul; and your very flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body. --Walt Whitman"

Posted By: Jim Jacobs on 07-04-2019, 01:56 pm
"One greets happily your return to poetry, or this reader does. We grow old, we tend our gardens, memories, desires thwarted and perennial, in the best of all possible worlds, or is it?"

Posted By: Stephen Rifkin on 07-04-2019, 01:49 pm