Peace

[intheheart]

Title: Peace
Rating: G
Summary: Maya and her garden.
Notes: One day, I will remember why I hate writing sestinas before I'm in the middle of one.


Enfold a seed in damp and loving earth,
one, then another, muddying your hands
Dig and weed, give water, care, and time
Watch leaf and sprout come forth and bud a flower.
Then walk among the plants, your fertile garden;
Breathe deep, and know a tender moment's peace.

You're missing that today, that sense of peace
that comes with garden scents, and taste of earth
The quiet only found inside your garden
serenity of soul and dirtied hands.
Accomplishment that swells when lovely flowers
lift up their heads, buoyed up by time.

It's that you lack this morning, quiet time
to reconnect yourself, reclaim your peace
Bind your broken heart within a flower
bury your memories deep in the earth.
You must make do, today, with your own hands
and spend your days elsewhere, outside your garden.

But soon, soon now, you'll reenter your garden
Go home, and know you've nothing now but time
To kneel in soil, scoop it in your hands
And let it settle, cupped palms full of peace;
To let the earth return slowly to earth
To touch the petals of a furling flower.

You bring them out, sometimes, bouquets of flowers
Picked by your hands, engendered in your garden,
The fruits of both your labors and the earth
brought to fulfillment by all-healing time.
You give, are thanked, but nothing to the peace
you gain through working with your own two hands.

They're calloused now, and dirty, your two hands,
That once held nothing worse than a cut flower;
But then was then, and then you knew no peace,
Not like what you have found within your garden.
It's better spent, and worthier, the time
That you have spent wrist-deep within the earth.

You've made your hands much better in your garden
In growing flowers, you have spent your time
In tending peace—for this, you bless the earth.