Day 301

Where that dust is, there was a garden.
You used to pass it every morning
on your way to buy bread, milk.
Flowers and vegetables, lemons and oranges.
You remember the fragrance, the way
you would pause, stand at the fence,
know the season by what was blooming
and what was waiting to bloom,
what was fallow and what was green.
Jasmine.  Roses.  You knew
whose garden it was; at times
she was there, she’d go inside the house
for a bag and fill it with what was growing.
There’s always more, she would say.
The earth keeps giving. Today you looked
at the dust, tried to find a stem, a piece
of a root. Wondered what had become
of the fruit trees, the rose bush, the woman.
Tried to think of the life in the soil underneath:
insects and worms preparing another season,
Soil teeming with life under the desolate air.