Poetic of Jane in the Garden

If one motivates early enough on the Front Range of Colorado the rewards are many.  Our quasi-mountain air stays cool till about eleven in the morning.  Many of our 'loved-to-death' places are quiet and relatively empty.  This is the time where young parents are still feeding and motivating toddlers.  Hipsters are at work or in line at Starbucks.  Seniors are at those up and at 'em Silver Sneakers offerings at the gym.

Yesterday's treasure was a forenoon write at the Denver Botanic Gardens.  There are five ladies, including myself, who have formed a subgroup from the official Write Age gatherings where we first met.  It is not a clique.  Rather five women of various educational and religious backgrounds who come together to talk about life, politics - albeit briefly, offspring if applicable and grandkids.  The last one is me, guilty as charged.

I enjoy these ladies and I am always up for a good reason to motivate and write.  As Heloise Jones says in her book The Writer's Block Myth "Change the scenery.  Take a new route.  Go on a retreat".  Good advice and the Garden is always a lovely place.  Different at each visit.  Changing with every season.  While I did drive the same route up there, being in the garden was quite inspiring.  And to me a morning away from my keyboard or the gym totally counts as a mini-retreat.

I was at the intersection of University and Alameda when an idea came to me.  Many times when I am in a museum I see paintings or sketches titled "Portrait of the Artist in His Garden" or some similar take.  Why not try to write today as writers in the garden.  A somewhat immersive experience to put ourselves in our writing in the garden, while actually writing in the garden.  A loose suggestion, or prompt if you prefer.  Just a whiff of a concept to get the groups creativity flowing.

We broke off to explore the garden in our own ways, and agreed to meet to share our writing in an hour.  I wrote a poem indoors, near the tropical conservatory, and a prose piece sitting near a pool of lilies.  Here they are.  Enjoy!

but a human-bird

Oftentimes I find myself

Perched

The canopy my nest

My eyes not eagle

But soft

I am but a

Human-Bird

Watching below

My brood has flown

No longer needing my

Regurgitations of

Worms, advice, stories

My breasts are fallow

My nest is empty
I puff the hollow-boned
Cage that surrounds my
Warmly beating heart
To crow about
My children

I need only preen myself
Long ago I molted those colorful plumes
Once use to attract lovers
Now adorning unknown children’s dreamcatchers

My flock was once other mothers

We’d spread our wings just
To sweep up our own
Little starlings

Now I fly a solitary flight

Ever reaching to the heavens
Seeking a life that
Formerly eluded me

Praying

That fable of Icarus
Ignores me

Self-Poetic of Jane in the Garden

This is about me.  It is mostly, always about me.  My paint is my ink and a notebook serves as canvas.  Painters may gesso to create a smooth surface.

I prefer to skip that step, I write to be real and to be raw.  If I wanted to recite a slick list of facts, I’d be a prosaist.

I seek the sounds of running water in the garden.  To remind myself that I am mostly aqueous as is Mother Earth.  Mother Earth is my mentor, my everlasting teacher.  The Goddess I worship.

She shows me how to be a flower.  How to bloom not only in daylight, but also in the darkness.  The obsidian value of etiolation.

She is gently quiet in the morning; as am I.  No rushing of children.  No shooing a husband out the door.  No longer snatching solitude as snippet.

I seek the inhale and the exhale of the membrane of the atmosphere. Solitude, serenity, courage and divinity can be mine in this garden of life.

Once I was a riotous orange flower with frenzied foliage.  I couldn’t shed the anxiety of reproduction.  Needing to afford my children both shade and fertilizer. 

Now I bloom slowly, each day as I arise.  My plumage is different each morning.  A different flower each season.

In winter I am holly.  Thorny, waxy and very deep green.  Small berries sustain the birds that overwinter in my heart.

In springtime I am lilacs, as was my mother and her mother before me.  Softly scented, boldly feminine.  I last only a short while, but my fragrance lingers in your memory.  As well as mine.

In summer I am pansies and posies and roses and rhododendron.  I am every flower.  Everything.  I am ubiquitous and unctuous.  I am a visual umami of my senses.    

In fall I am the lone leaf hanging on the promise of a deciduous tree.  I will re-bloom, re-blossom and return to wax poetic another day.  Another season, another year.

Time to Write,

Jane