Garden of the Seasons: Images and Words -- Seasonal Dancers Leap Across a Stage

 Lady Slipper

It's dark behind the image

as if signaling the advance, or retreat,

of some larger movement

This slipper will not fit any foot,

human or animal that walks the woods

Something rare and, like so much else, endangered

                                                            

                                          

                                   





 
                                                                                     Clematis Looking Down at Us

Like fallen stars

but oversized

great violet wheels descending on tame, unwary

     villages below

those little folk of summer

                                                                                  

                                                                                  

 Red Peonies

Some explosion still in process

above its precious hanging garden

     of over-extended leafage

a red parachute

welcomed by so much green

                  The Edge of May
                               

                  A gamble of coins tossed in a pot

                  born on the edge of a bare, spare        

                  world... See me it says and remember

                  Wisteria

A Rough Patch

The sweet woodruff are a close-knit people

Nothing is handed out,

the others push in at the edges

They are white on top

like old men in Florida

They are herdsmen of the themselves

Swamps

They mass, invaders of the sog, the wettest green of all

Prophets of the life to come

Cabbages are kings

The Garden of Verse: "An Informal Garden," my poem in the June 2020 Verse-Virtual

Associated with the French style of architecture developed in the 17th century and epitomized at Versailles, the formal garden is based on symmetry and the idea of imposing a man-made order on nature. 
            The formal garden style theoretically derives from classical ideas of beauty translated into regular-shaped garden beds laid out in symmetrical patterns. 
          The English garden, developed a century or so later, replaced the formal, or geometrical, patterns with an attempt to imitate nature -- while of course neatening things up. English gardens used a lot of trees, many of them -- as Thomas Jefferson and John Adams were surprised to discover -- imported from America.
         My own approach is more casual than that, a lot of laissez-faire permission for certain plants to run riot, followed by occasional stabs of re-imposing order -- especially when I'm trying to save something small, and precious, and way more vulnerable from the invasions of something bigger, stronger, and 'naturally' unrestrained. 
          It's a post-Evolution Theory state of mind. You have to give evolution its head, and not try to carve reality up into little squares, which people walk around and admire as if in an art gallery... But then you have to intervene, as you sit fit, on behalf of the small and the weak to impose a little justice. And keep some of those little guys in the game.  
          Anyway, I've mounted a kind of defense of this approach in my poem "An Informal Garden," which appears in the June issue of "Verse-Virtual." It's a paean to imperfection, and the joy of allowing nature to be natural and run screaming (at plant-life speed) through one's property.
          So, yes, I guess it's really June already. For meteorologists, that means we've entered the season of summer. It's amazing how "the natural order of things" keeps moving along according to its own laws, while human societies keep screwing things up. 
           I'm posting the poem below. To read my other poems, and those of all 42 poets represented in the June 2020 issue go to  verse-virtual June 2020



An Informal Garden

(Gardens always have something to say)

Not for me one of those neatly articulated 
plant factories, everything straight-lined 
and growing to perfection
its plants arranged by platoon,
 Company at Attention!
color-coded, all their papers in order,
commanding every syllable, 
heel-clicked to perfection

Nobody would look at anything I planted
whether in the greater, or lesser, outdoors,
or smooshed together in a tiny nook
of a working house inconveniently deprived of 
 a conservatory,
or, that unimaginable structure: a 'greenhouse' -- 
picture that! a house built wholly of green, 
 slimy roots with hairs
tackling the guests, binding them to their armchairs

but, instead, shoved into a corner, under a window,
with the pink glo-light glistening at all hours, 
offering a little taste of Lost Vegas -- 
 the lure of nature on the wild side
run amok, bereft of magazine spreads
     and catalogues 
and perfectly greenhouse-grown arrangements
of movable parts

but, au contraire, crammed into the midst of a messy
 day-to-day existence
of growth and decay...

...And think "formal" garden.

I'm feeling informal today 
How about you?