As the heat retreats for a day or two and the wind starts to shift, they bring to me a nursery rhyme that I dimly remember being sung from my window. As I laid there in my crib, it was a voice that wasn’t exactly my mothers though I called it the same.
This is what the wind now said.
In a garden gaunt and gangly
stems celebrate their spindly virtue
and pat themselves on the back
for the thinnest shadow cast
Until a family of Fennel,
not familiar with the fanfare of despair
fanned out their feathers
to catch some air.
Much to the shock of Nasturtium and Mustard
and the humbug of old horse radish
who spoke up with a speech on sparecity
he had misremembered from a time before any of the attending members were even sprouts
Mother Fennel brushed it by,
not without care,
but fair to say,
with an assuredness that made even Artichoke silent.
“This discourse of denial”
She said
“Not only defeats the design
but deafens the Delighted one
who, moves from within the pith,
like a crane fly to the river.
like a trill to the bird,
who, speaks,
not as one fishes for words,
but whose words weave
A net of splendor with witch to fish.
So still your ire
of this iridescence.
For more truth can be told in an eye full of delight
than in any rehearsed rendering of a story forgotten to the night.
For what good is a garden that gouts out it’s own green?
And worthy for what when we’re only in wane?
Now who will step into splendor and more?
For it was stored in your seed to be fed from the deep.
At this the clouds clapped having finally been freed
from the withholding of need bound down tight to the ground.
They came close to see this peacock of plants
for her opulent show, none could scarcely oppose.
They let loose a rain they’d been longing to give, should one only look up and like just to take in.
In this garden once droughty and dwindling thin
whose seeds were strewn there and left without care,
now lived plants that grew greener than any would dare.
They shamelessly spread over each inch of dirt
and gave in their beauty far more than they took
For this family of fennel
who once led the way
knew the ways of the wild and in within their strong stalks
housed a wisdom so old, that it broke every lock.
Of course this isn’t the way I remember it, as all songs turn and change as they travel. So perhaps as this breeze finds its way to you, it will bring something quite new.
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