His Garden

Here I am
the wild and loose fuschia
rose you tried to hide.
You wanted a larger
more profound bloom, one
that flowers then dies
flowers then
dies, flowers
then dies
all summer.
You cut me
to place her inside where
her pleasing delicious colors could
satisfy you again and again.
You didn't plan for me to
break loose against
the grafting.
You didn't expect me
to live again but provide
only a backbone and
heartbeat to your
hybrid rose, created to
please you but
here I am
burst free from my training
spraying these clusters of
chaotic pink flowers
spreading tiny uninhibited
foliage across your porch
across your evergreens, even
the peonies and
stately stalks of oriental lily
rising to late spring.
Here I am
the wild that cannot be
contained, the finely planned
disorganization of one-season
blooms created by One
who smiles on such things.
You didn't expect me this spring but
He did.

Melissa Greene
The photo above can be found at:
http://uktara.deviantart.com/art/The-Secret-Garden-3-88532101

The Secret

Two girls discover
the secret of life
in a sudden line of
poetry.

I who don't know the
secret wrote
the line. They
told me

(through a third person)
they had found it
but not what it was
not even

what line it was. No doubt
by now, more than a week
later, they have forgotten
the secret,

the line, the name of
the poem. I love them
for finding what
I can't find,

and for loving me
for the line I wrote,
and for forgetting it
so that

a thousand times, till death
finds them, they may
discover it again, in other
lines

in other
happenings. And for
wanting to know it,
for

assuming there is
such a secret, yes,
for that
most of all.

by Denise Levertov

Children with Autism: Quote of the Day

"This stapler is broken!! Staplers are so overrated."

Hannah,
age 8

Joy and Pain

Hello all. I've noticed that I have neglected my writing here on my blog and I'm not really sure why. Honestly, I have just been so peaceful and happy lately that I feel I am losing my artistry! Most of my life my creativity has been fueled by pain and anxiety, so what do you write about when life is good? This is just a HORRIBLE dilema! I purchased a poetry anthology for myself that celebrates joy, and it was encouraging for me to read that good poetry can still be "happy." This is a very new thing for me... this happiness stuff... and I'm not sure how it is going to work for me. :-) In all seriousness, I am not naive enough to believe that all of life is this black and white-- there is either misery or joy. There's a large continuum and I am very grateful to be living much of my life these days on the joy end of the continuum. There is actually a place to be found, where one can hold both joy and pain and find contentment in that.