June 2001 Entry -- It's Over

Gardening

I

When we still lived lives
as if we mattered to each other,
we used to garden, tilling soil so rich
I felt that I could plant anything in it --
tomatoes, melons, myself, dreams --
and they would grow.

But we ended up with some kind of tree,
a dwarf, I think, with deep gnarled roots,
branches that twisted and cracked
just short of blooming every time we
got close to having Spring.

I watered that tree even after you left,
with everything I had -- rain, tears, hope,
more rain. I planted other things around it
to encourage its growth, but the branches
never looked like anything more than something
you might use to start a fire.

II

Eventually,
it just turned brown and stopped
growing.

III

After snow had covered it two times,
and the year's first warm sun shined
its life-affirming light upon it, I took off my
shirt, pointed a spade into the just-thawn ground
around that tree,
and pushed.

I cut a circle around it with the shovel's blade
and dug -- dug for hours, dug for years, dug until
I stood in a kind of moat that separated it
from everything else in my life.

I couldn't believe how angry I was
at how deep the roots were
and how they still fought me,
still held on
hard to the earth
and tried to make me feel like I should help them.
I couldn't believe that I'd planted them.

I remember leaning hard on the shovel's handle
with my life's full weight and wedging
the blade between the roots and the soil
and how those last roots
snapped! like firecrackers.

IV

I remember feeling free.

V

When I lifted the root ball up and out of its home
it seemed to shudder, as if shaking itself free of soil.
I just left it there, in the open, not even buried,
wanting everyone to see it and know.

Copyright 2001, Rune