Sunday Service

 Quiet hovers around the edges of morning,

no cicada howls its urge to procreate,

no human sounds emanate 

from teenage radios,

 trees keep their own peace.

A gardener ventures outside to work,

immediately enveloped in stillness,

 breathing in a silence more church-like

 than church.

 

Anemones are weeks early,

their smiling faces 

held midair by a magician

who lives in the garden

along with the chelone,
(cha-loanee)

shadow nymphs that nod

and smile at nearby lobelia,

still fired up, waiting 

for ruby-throats to return,

willing to give up nectar for a kiss.

The gardener toils

slipping out of stiffness

into a girlish body,

bending and pulling,

bending and pulling,

she finds the weeds don't resist

preferring shallow roots

they hit and run

 setting a billion seeds.

She spies a shy trumpet flower

wrapped in voluptuous shade 

behind the garden trellis,

a brilliant orange cup,

in search of a butterfly.

 High in the cloudless blue

flies a single hawk,

wings like sails, aloft on a breeze.

She stops to watch,

 and  silent grace flows,
 surrounding

the hawk and the woman.

At last she bends again,

 engulfed in the sweetness

rising from the herb patch
on humid air.

Hyssop bites, mint invites,

basil calms, sage invigorates.

Pausing for a lemonade

when the sweat trickles and tickles,

she notices a green crickety fellow

sunning itself on the window.

It lingers long enough

for the obligatory photos,

and the gardener holds her breath,

studies his underside

through skin transparent as glass,

watching his body perform

the samba of life,

 six legs stretched to the limit,

antennae ever vigilant,
eyes popping,

respirations steady and strong.

This marvelous green creature,

 breathes

the gardener's air.

Linking up with :Spiritual Sundays

Thought for Today:  Sensing 'The Near One' (Karl Rahner) during a morning of garden work.