Tag Archives: W.S. Merwin

Only the day and I are here.

my garden, other gardens, poetry, time, , ,
The glory of 2020

When I was at Pippin’s I got to help water her garden, and pull ever encroaching forest ferns out of the blueberry patch. Many years ago she planted four varieties of blueberries, two of each, aiming for a harvest that would stretch from one end to the other of the season, and they mostly are growing and spreading, and bearing fruit.

She had recently taken her dahlia tubers out of winter storage and planted them inside the deer fence; they were almost all coming up. Often I have visited in September, for Ivy’s birthday, when those flowers are in their glory.

Four years ago I visited their homestead in this month of June, and it’s interesting to see my pictures of different plants and activities from back then. I don’t know yet when I will be able to return….

The glory of this day

Anyway, I drove home yesterday, and immediately went out to water the potted plants; the mock orange is stealing the show right now. I am thankful to have my own garden to play in.  Out there I can forget what month or year it is — or what century! — if only for a moment.

DEW LIGHT

Now in the blessed days of more and less
when the news about time is that each day
there is less of it I know none of that
as I walk out through the early garden
only the day and I are here with no
before or after and the dew looks up
without a number or a present age

-W.S. Merwin

Back in the dark before I remember.

nature, poetry, time, , , ,

JUST THIS

When I think of the patience I have had
back in the dark before I remember
or knew it was night until the light came
all at once at the speed it was born to
with all the time in the world to fly through
not concerned about every arriving
and then the gathering of the first stars
unhurried in their flowering spaces
and far into the story the planets
cooling slowly and the ages of rain
then the seas starting to bear memory
the gaze of the first cell at its waking
how did this haste begin this little time
at any time this reading by lightning
scarcely a word this nothing this heaven

–W.S. Merwin, from The Shadow of Sirius 2008

by Henri-Edmond Cross

Why it is never finished.

beauty, my garden, quotes, ,
2016

“Obviously a garden is not the wilderness but an assembly of shapes, most of them living, that owes some share of its composition, its appearance, to human design and effort, human conventions and convenience, and the human pursuit of that elusive, indefinable harmony that we call beauty. It has a life of its own, an intricate, willful, secret life, as any gardener knows. It is only the humans in it who think of it as a garden. But a garden is a relationship, which is one of the countless reasons why it is never finished.”

-W.S. Merwin

2022