Stanza 8 is new.
*
Dedicated to my beloved husband, Floyd Russell Taylor
*
Once again, upon a weekend time, we shook off the city.
As always, by Friday, it felt like a fur drenched in wet.
At first, we motored through the fog, then, across the Golden Gate
And into the sun, the fun of Sonoma.
Our rental car conveyed our escape
To the haven-heaven of the Steng’s discrete stead.
*
Arriving by rounding a bend, there were beehives
Just inside the property fence.
It was fitting that we saw the pollinators first,
The givers, the gifters of gardens.
Behind them were horses at peace in a pasture.
Animal nobility, with a snort, one sized us up, then glanced away.
*
We veered to the right and idled the car
Right in front of a Victorian “Lady,” painted in yellow and orange.
The house was as perfect as a gingerbread cookie.
In the Spring, rings and rows of bearded iris,
In all the colors that an iris genetics could endow,
Rustled in the wind, dominating their dominion.
*
Mary and John Steng were not at home. Of course not.
We were just being polite by ringing the bell.
John was always out driving a tractor for some Park and Rec.
And Mary? Forever out yonder in the gardens,
One for vegetarians, the other for ornamentalists.
We parked on the grass behind the house,
*
Two weekend guests about to roost.
We separated.
Always a man with a list,
Mary went with Russ, to show him her laden tables,
Her myriad baskets and bushels.
She listened as he beckoned his selections.
*
Then too, she picked his requests from the trees,
Or dug them up from below.
Meanwhile, I wandered the mazy paths
Of a flower garden Mary named her “secret daydream.”
I was hidden in growth that had stretched itself up,
Inside a wild thicket that had spread itself wide.
*
The trees were dropping fruit.
The bushes were all densely poxed
With a rash of miniature blooms.
The ground flowers rioted over here, over there,
Rioted everywhere
But the paths encrusted with clover and weed.
*
Today, for once, as I wandered,
A poet too shy or too wise,
I shied away from divining what my mission
In this world, this universe, could conceivably be.
This beauty was a breather, a truce with myself.
It was enough that I was loved and not estranged.
*
His purchases completed,
Russ sent Mary into the flowers
To find and retrieve his Steves.
Mary knew how to lure me back out.
She knew I would be surreptitious,
Watching her choose and cut her flowers into a bouquet,
*
Customized just for me.
She knew I would follow her back to my Russ,
As always, a man who was waiting for me patiently.
Sunday, the next day, inspired,
Russ cooked his treasure of vegetables
Into a feast for the two of us.
*
The world locked out of our apartment,
The phone off its hook,
We sat across from each other at table.
We gave each other a smile, just a single, signaling smile,
But one so deeply felt, so authentic,
Surely, God Himself took note (or, in absentia, His angel of a secretary).
*
I said a kind of Grace:
“May we travel to Mary’s again, and again, and again.
After, Russ, you cook.
For a day we need solace, I’ll start writing a poem
About us in a garden together.
Later, I’ll pass it on to whoever, pass it on forever.”
*
Spontaneously, we both rose,
And bending over the table toward each other,
We sealed my Grace with a kiss.
*
Steven Golden
December 3rd, 2023
stevengoldenpoetry 