When I am in the garden pulling weeds,
green shoots of grass that keep setting their seeds
in the garden bed,
my life finds me.
When I am in the kitchen cooking,
or at the table,
where puzzle pieces laid out by children
talk to me with their varied colours,
pink, blue and green,
my life finds me.
When I am on the lawn,
contemplating the leaf blower,
thinking of how I and it will dance
as we seek to dissuade the leaves
from making their small piles,
and instead see them fall an avalanche in the sky,
then my life finds me.
Here, not beyond the gate,
but in the kitchen where I can see the river,
and in the garden
where the camellias make little perfect
cameos of the summer’s roses,
and in the bedrooms of my children
picking up clothes from the floor,
perhaps lifting a figurine
placing it down
that I might linger,
breathe them in.
Ana Lisa de Jong
Living Tree Poetry
May 2021
Living Tree Poetry 