The Mental Garden

      A rambling meadow scenery
      Rank with irrigated greenery,
      Showed a semi-sawed-off double dozen
      Of saplings stretched since Spring, some
5     Waist-high to heaven, that autumn's
      Clear-cut mowing would take care of
      (Not much of disordered growth
      Survives the park's enforced swath).
      Nature's mistakes seed a scene
10    With a richer oddness than she means.
      Plants that harbour high ambitions
      Need time and shade for such positions.
      Ignore me long enough, and I might
      Just get to be something; kids grow at night.
15    Adults enlarge by thinking through
      (So I've heard said, and think it true). 
      A modest eraser can undo
      A millennium's gain by rubbing through.
      I bite my new ones down to wood
20    And trust to cross-outs, understood
      Arrows, and wild whole-page insertions.
      Erasure's just too much exertion
      And never pays for the lost word
      That down the line might have proved good.
25    Human education is a crop
      Best harvested without a lop.
      Shapely shape the upward trees
      By what mind kens, and heart perceives.
      The grandest but add leaf to leaf
30    To make their roundness right-
      Just so the round of human life
      Requires a necessary height.

 

From the collection "Assembling the Earth"

Written by Gregg Glory [Gregg G. Brown]

More information available on gregglory.com.