08/06/2026
Outside, The Garden Appears To Be Empty
The garden has given up
its bright insistence.
The last calendula
leans brown at the edges.
Parsley crouches low to the earth.
Old sage, crooked as a crone,
holds its fragrance
even under frost.
We pull potatoes
from the dark with grateful hands,
as if uncovering
buried treasure.
In the orchard
the apple trees are bare now.
A singular plump fruit
softening in the grass,
its sweetness returning
to wasps, to mould,
to the invisible mouths
that carry everything home.
Cherry trees let go leaf by leaf.
Willow transparent to the mountain.
Mornings arrive
with their white breath.
The wild keeps its own counsel
lavish and untamed,
answering to no-one.
The birds are unbothered.
And still, in the kitchen,
the garlic crackles in oil,
gnarly roots yield to the knife,
a pear is cut open,
its grain shining
like wet wood.
We live by these offerings:
grain and leaf,
stored sunlight,
the patient labour
of rain and compost,
worm and frost.
What fed on death
now feeds us.
What fed us
will fall back
to the same dark
that asks for nothing,
and wastes nothing.
So we gather
at the turning of the season,
with our bowls and our bodies,
our ripening and our losses.
Outside, the garden
appears to be empty.
Under the earth,
with ancient sovereignty,
everything necessary
is becoming.
