Poetry, Gardens and Reflections

I’m finally reading “The Wild Braid: A poet reflects on a century in the garden, by Stanley Kunitz. I was introduced to Kunitz through a poem by Mary Oliver about Kunitz in the last workshop I took. Oliver called Kunitz her Merlin. My instructor Melanie Faith mentioned The Wild Braid. The book is a wonderful mix of poetry and conversations about Kunitz gardens.

As you can see, I’ve come to Kunitz’ work by a braid of introductions. Kunitz, talks of the many forms of communications, aside and beyond words. This last week has brought this home to me through more than one source. Sometimes, the universe is determined to show us something it feels we need to know, isn’t it?

I learned at an early age that grief can be beyond words, beyond tears, but I never really thought too much about other emotions.

I listened to my son play an arrangement of Silent Night and O’Holy Night yesterday on the guitar. No words, no singing voice could have conveyed the love and sincere faith in the same way each tenderly plucked note did. A heart can break and heal hearing that.

And then, Kunitz reflections about walking through his garden, brushing his flowers to release their perfume touched me. I do the same thing. I’ve always called it my morning benediction, but I see now, it was a way I need to communicate beyond the human way of conversation and words.

You see, I am a gardener and poet, too, and reading this book was like meeting a friend who knew exactly what I feel as I work my garden, make a poem, write a novel. Poetry is cultivating words and composting them down to their most rich order and form. It is moving words around, taking out words, working the poem, sometimes for years. It is also, finding the silence, that thing beyond words, beyond years, beyond happy. It is listening, quietly, to unspoken whispers. To music and scents, textures and sounds. To nature and nurture. It is allowing yourself to crack open. Be vulnerable.

To garden, to write poetry, to write a novel is to live cracked open. (And yes, I know some will say—just cracked. I ignore them, with a smile. I am living a distilled life. I don’t think those who laugh know what they are missing.)

Listen.