He invited plans.
Hers were wild.
He watched her move a pot.
She watched him.
He came into her private garden
and stood surrounded by candlelight,
and when she came down from her bath,
she had no idea what he was doing there.
His father, he said, told him we were meant
for Eden, and ever since the Fall,
we have been trying to re-make
the perfect garden.
“Is this your Eden?” he asked her.
My search for it, she said.
He touched the flowers with such gentleness.
Later, she knelt in the same place where he had stood.
She might be digging
when the wind would blow,
and the ghost of her lost child
would run by, laughing.
She sat with him another day and said,
You will tell me if I am mad,
and he said, “You are not mad.”
You do not know me completely yet, she replied.
There came a night when
they stood in one another’s presence,
dressed in white, like a wedding,
and then undressing, completely vulnerable.
Both of them had seen betrayal,
and so much pain and loss,
and yet they opened their hearts –
they opened their bodies to the future.
The king will come into his garden,
the water will flow over the rocks,
the seashells will glisten and shine,
and the music will play, it will play –
a song of hope and desire,
a song for being reborn,
for there is a time for everything,
a season for every matter under heaven.
Jane Beal
(soundtrack by Peter Gregson)
THE POETRY PLACE 