There will be a cat watching you, sunset stripes rolling in the dirt you just shook from stubborn grass roots. He will chew minutely on the bare rose thorns, sniffing each delicately, ears flinching when the nose is pricked. Here you are on your knees, you don’t like cats so you just talk to him instead of touching, threaten him to stay away from your daffodil bulbs and trailing purple spiderwort. Each worm that wriggles under your digging you should clumsily pick up between garden-glove fingers, transplant a foot or two, scraping a little ditch home. Everything will quiet while you do this, while he squirms uncertainly, frantically. You didn’t realize there were so many pebbles, rocks, stones, how cold the concrete was until you were kneeling for too long, dirt flung up to your elbows. In the morning you will have bruises but for now it’s late October and the dirt has changed from wet summer heat to dry, closed, secret winter. No frost yet so the bell peppers, the sage, the moonflowers still pretend to be warm, though tonight they will shiver a bit. The dark that gathers is the same as when you were seven; only in soft folds that promise midnight, no cold dusk that drives your age inside. Tomorrow the garden will still be yours, but you know, as an ambulance screams past down the road and the street lights buzz and tick to life, you know it won’t be the same garden.
Photo (c) 2012 by Christopher Montgomery.
Photo (c) 2012 by Christopher Montgomery.
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