not a list, a poem

This is for Jeanette, to return a favor, and to wish her well on her trip.


P O E M   F O R   J E A N E T T E

The year when I was young and lived alone,
I kept a garden behind the house I rented near the beach,
and planted only tomatoes and hyacinth.

I thought that maybe if one wouldn’t grow,
the other would, which was only one mistake I made.

I watered them every day, sometimes several times;
I stared at the soil and waited for them to break.
I watered again. Everything was damp and muddy.
There were no clouds, or too many. Nothing was right.

We think we know things, and we plant foolishly,
or drown what we have planted before it grows.

What I am trying to say, I think,
is that the heart is a half-finished instrument
and must often be left alone.

The heart, I have learned, wants only a warm room
and silence. It wants dim lights, or to hold
something worn in its small hands. A stone

that softens at any touch, no matter whose.