90spoems/urbgarden

WORLD VIEW FROM AN URBAN GARDEN

The red tile roof across the vacant lot sprouts metal cylinders like tongues turned toward the sky. The building beneath breathes in the breeze, heaves out the stale stink of last night’s supper, old grease and garlic meeting pine and palm.

Next door something terribly neo-Mediterranean eclipses our ocean view. It hovers, too high and wide and deep for its space. A piece of virtual reality with a cardboard roof, its window boxes falling off before tenants move in. In the one lighted window I see a couple arguing. She stands, hands on hips, he rushes from the room.

All winter I have watched the poinsettia bush against the south wall. In December it boasted postcard blooms. By spring the brittle stalks completely bare, heat gathering on the red clay tiles.

Looking south, I see Margaret in the window at 5p.m. I watch her take the steps slowly, holding on. I see her succulent plant trailing down the wall. I hear her visitors call her honey. Through her window I see the heater in the wall, a painting over the sofa. Margaret in the window at 5p.m., reading the evening news. Her ’65 Caddy sits idle out back. Steam shouts from the dry cleaners that bears her name.

I grow melancholy in my urban world which makes me forget who I am. This turtle life I have lived, leaving home with fuchsias in full bloom. Letting go of what I could not carry, the giant bird of paradise whose flowers spilled upon the roof, the spiky fern tangled in the fence, the dangerous yucca along the drive. The marguerites and impatiens – all the failed dreams that garden could have confessed.

House to house with window boxes I can never hang, pushing pots of wet black dirt too heavy to lift. For ten springs these roses have waited for trustworthy soil, to root wide and deep. Planting is a privilege of ownership.

I lived around the corner once. It was there I learned to give up. Homes and cars, jobs and men, sick cats and sofas. Every thing that had been my life until then. But too much has been relinquished. I stand my ground against having no ground to stand on. But this is where I am: My world is shrinking and I am running out of time. I have become one of those balconies I used to watch, where people insist on creating life from nothing. Gardens without dirt.

Nothing would do but that I should get to town. And here I am. The bright blue neon of a fast food chain sizzling out my kitchen window at night. A loud alley band slices through the serenity I had planned. City buses hurl themselves through the intersection at fifteen minute intervals. Cars stream down the boulevard.

A desperate stubbornness on my part this urban garden without sun or soil. The balcony, dense with plants, scarcely serves as a passageway. A glass-topped table, its perimeter defining the corner it shapes, one short leg evened with an errant piece of steel. Cramped lives rubbing together in tight resignation. Aloe, the rushing runners of hottentot figs, something succulent, its fleshy leaves bulging from the lip of its bowl, close neighbors out of necessity. Primrose, snapdragon, geranium, lobelia. Spider plants and creeping Charley. Parsley, sage, rosemary, dill, cilantro, chives and basil – in boxes. Pots of peppermint, a basket of city lettuce. A Christmas cactus which promises a startling bloom the breadth of my hand, ambitious for a sunny day. The shadow of the pine threatens the sticky buds along the orchid stalks. The ginger sprouts hesitate beneath the soil, their pungent petals suffocating in the shade. One tenacious rose, “perfect delight,” tries to survive in the tentative noon.

Hot pink carnations in a strawberry pot, an old Boston fern which follows me about from house to house. A blue-speckled water crock with coral-colored poppies, one petal wiggles free and catches the breeze as it drifts over the rooftops. It makes me think of dragging home dreams in the shape of used tables and 3-legged chairs, something tossed away, as our lives were, which might be salvaged yet – and the cruel choices of close circumstances.

The buds that I hovered over all spring have given me brown blooms. That being how it is, I think I will drink beer from the bottle, shape my lips around the glass rim. Count among my treasures the knowledge of a pool stick in my hand – and a man unconcerned about dinner, who smiles at my chaotic desk and says, “Looks like things are cooking.” Things are cooking and sprouting and taking root. There are plenty of tales that a woman like me can tell and they aren’t all told yet.

Sometimes the flowers are brown. Some seeds never sprout at all. Rename failure fertilizer. Think of yesterday as compost. All that boiling, seething rot . This is a lesson I have learned a thousand times and will, no doubt, learn again. To take what you can get your hands on and do with it what you can.

I wanted more. I must tell you that. Hillsides bursting with wild mustard. Sweet peas trailing up string. Bearded iris spreading wild in the fields. Red and yellow tulips on the desk.

But a stem bursting with brown blooms is what I have. And him reminding me one Saturday to take what the universe gives and work with that. I am the garden I tend now. Earth worms laced through fingers. Trowels in hip pockets. Fancy lamb skin gloves to soften my hands while I work.