My Father Was a Gardener
A poem
When we were young — I sometimes make the mistake of thinking I haven’t aged while you have Maybe it’s because two years after you came into the world in the spring as a seed just cracked and so susceptible to the complete process of ruin, I was delivered as a perennial, hardy leaves and shoots grown back after winters of past incarnations Maybe because my father was a gardener can I recognize the entire cycle of seed to spent blooms on an annual only alive for one season, and it was our season before the fall Maybe because I have seen several bright summers come and go, fading into brown, the bittersweet nature of goodbye turning it all golden, did the arrival of autumn not appear to alter me But when I look down at the faded flowers of my hands withered and dry, lines form as they fold across a lap that bore no fruit Petals fall like paper on my feet in the snow and I know I am not unchanged — we were both green