Garden In Winter

Odd things one remembers—
Like the long-legged bird with the yellow bill
That tried to mate with your left shoe
In the glass house conservatory
In Victoria, British Columbia
How beautiful it was, that quiet morning there
Among orchids and palmate leaves
Banana trees and spider monkeys
And that strange insistent bird
Going from remarkable
To perplexing to simply irritating
Like many kinds of love...

Or those tiny ruined cities
Each adobe brick smaller than a thumbnail
Miniature Mesa Verdes set precarious and unexpected
Into the lintel of an abandoned warehouse
At eye-level in a slated for demolition Bowry building.
Today in the museum
Ruins on their own island
Tiny version of Anasazi or Hohokum
Wall, unexcavated kiva, ball court
Trade route to the south
To white shell, coral, macaw, Aztec
Suddenly preserved for the eye
Something that perhaps should only have been glimpsed
In time passing...

It's winter here in this garden
Formal beds heaped and banked in straw
Curved bridge of the pond
Might seem to span from shore to shore
But a closer look reveals
The ends touch down on water not land
Although it seems
To span something substantial
It is not
Something you can step on to
Or ever hope to cross,
This bridge of dreams...

© Miriam Sagan