~
This year’s garden is smaller than last year’s garden
which was smaller than my garden the year before
as I become less able to kneel dig lift.
Still I’m grateful to be able to garden at all.
For seventy years, gardens have been my teachers
admonishing me to plan prepare plant
water weed and wait
for a power greater than myself
to provide the needed sun and rain
bees and worms.
To trust that in the liminality
between planting and emerging
when nothing seems to be going on
new life is exploding.
So much happens beneath the surface.
To accept that not every seed will sprout
nor every seedling survive
nor every plant produce
and that weeds are always with us.
To live in the faith
because it’s been true for 70 years
and why should this year be any different
that the harvest will come.
To be thankful
to share
and then lie fallow
resting in readiness …
~ ~
The Geriatric Pilgrim: Traveling the Landscape of Faith and Grief 
I’m not savvy about poems or poetic structures, but “This Year’s Garden” is magnificent! It tells an ongoing story that develops as you read, with clever emphasis on the more poignant thoughts. Loved it! 🙂
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Thank you, Nancy.
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A perfect parable, Rick.
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I really hadn’t thought of the poem as a parable, Mitch, until you pointed it out and I remembered that I added the lines about weeds always being with us last Sunday after hearing my rector give a sermon on Jesus’s parable of the weeds. Thnx.
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I thought just what Mitch thought when I was reading this poem–what a perfect parable of the cyclicality of life and the faith required to live it. And my garden gets simpler each year too. Thank you, Rick.
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