Analysis of Garden

When we talked about the world

we were talking about order:

a trail of grass, a fist of blooms.

My mother points at a slow

and deliberate fall of the full fruit.

“When we are dying,” she says

“when we are long gone and dead,”

And it is so easy to pretend we had a world

of choice. A green, easy tending.

The orchids tenaciously

cling to their dark barks.

We talked straight into evening,

straight into each tangled tendril

angled against dark, into dark.

If we could only hold the edgeless

in place. Night and its reckless weeds.

The light was not ours to give.