In the Eternal Moment: Why I Garden; Why I Write ("On Hyndford Street" by Van Morrison)

 

I have this strange need to begin each writing session in the moment, which is probably why I’m a poet, not a novelist.   It would be difficult to write a novel in the ever present now, as that is always shifting, both internally and externally—as fluid as a reflection in a slow moving river or even a lake.  Sure that image may return tomorrow, but it will no longer be the same:  different light, different current, different sky—the mirror recording something new with each passing moment.

If anything, I am a photographer who uses words.  That limits me.   But perhaps, that is alright.  There is something centering about a pink gladiola next to a soft yellow gladiola behind the grid-wire fence—the delicate, giving petal cropped by the rigid square.

That is why I garden:  surfaces, textures, reflections.

I couldn’t explain that a week or so ago to the permaculture guild visiting my garden.  Not only do I know so little in comparison to them about growing soil and growing plants, but we are not even seeking the same experience.

They seek harmony though action.  Eating right, gardening right to sustain the planet.  Very admirable.  At an abstract level, I want that too.

But that isn’t what drives me.  It’s the moment.  Here.  Now.  Dragon flies hovering above my pond.  Jack, my cat, softly meowing, as he prowls the garden and discusses his finds in a language I don’t understand but comprehend fully.

Life is in the grasshopper, which is why I felt like a murderer capturing one off my giant sunflower and feeding it to my chicken.  It’s not playing by the game rules.  It nearly made me sick.  I’d have no problem with the chicken getting it on its own, but to give a grasshopper the death sentence simply because it was trying to make a living in my garden doesn’t seem right.  In fact, it felt like sin.

Perhaps it was pure coincidence, but a storm of small birds, sparrows I think, swirled in on my yard to do my dirty work.  Call it what you will, nature, God—balance is being achieved without me having to destroy anything.  All I have to do is step back and enjoy light, patterns, flickering light, fluttering sounds--the hum of a fly and buzz of a humming bird, the soft sinking of day into goodnight.

I am astounded by life and only want to be transparent enough to reflect back light.  There is a pond and in it there is a sunset.  And the pond and the sunset and the bedrock beneath are the word, and anyone who listens deep will do right.

That is why I garden.

That is why I write.

When I’m fully in the now, if at no other moment, I do right, which feels good.  I soften, open.  Grasshoppers become sacred even while they devour my favorite sunflower.   Hate does not dance on the surface of a pond.  Only light.  Love.   God.

Winning dissipates with last light of day and I become whole with the night.