Lavender, Part II
“Lavender grows in gardens like mine,”
she said, “with delicate blossoms
harvested around the globe
since ancient Greece and Rome.
Fragile bouquets transformed into
sensual fragrance for the bath,
calmative tea for tension, depression;
uplifting, purifying aroma
said to be therapeutic for the human soul.”
Her voice sounded like mine,
but I wasn’t sure who was talking.
The practiced phrases rolling off
her stiff tongue
like some garden club matron
lecturing at the podium
on a Thursday morning in May.
Detached, aloof. No sign of
affection for anything,
let alone a life-giving plant.
“English and French varieties
are revered by herbalists,
the makers of potions and oils,
the keepers of promises.”
As if she knew anything about promises...
this contained, solitary voice
sentenced to the confines
of restricted speech
and fenced yards,
hiding behind a lifetime of words,
ringing her own mortality
like a death knoll.
It is she who tend this garden
in the desert.
Her lavender specimen
now four feet tall
emanates a life of its own,
keeping its promise of spring
and blooming, when nothing else will.
Her fingers slide down a woody stem,
snip the stalk and bring the tiny flowers
to her nose. She inhales deeply
the pungent odor of peace.
She is comfortable there, sitting
at the foot of her desert bush.
The lone survivor
of her genteel days.
Life was not supposed to be
this hard. Nothing in the desert
has been easy.
Even growing this scruffy herb
in the dry and sandy soil
has been a challenge.
Feeble latticework erected
to protect it from angry gales,
water rationed to its deep roots
in the searing summer heat.
Her hands dry and scratched
from harvesting the herbs,
working the ground,
pruning the deadwood.
(That other woman outside of her
denies the pain.)
My hands are dry and aged, too,
from sorting through the papers
of a lifetime of work.
Not the beautiful pages
of my unfinished poems
in slim volumes tucked
inside my bookcase,
but the bulky piles of documents
of a complicated life.
A life I have created for us
with her visionless choices,
her entrapment,
and her fear.
I wonder if the piles would be missed
if I simply threw them all
in the trash.
Spent my days instead
sitting quietly with her and her lavender,
her strong and soothing herb
which demands no explanations,
no paperwork, no payment.
Which gives instead
a singular, stirring serenity to life,
when nothing else will.
Perhaps this woman could be revived
with an herbal infusion
(said to be therapeutic to the human soul).
Offered an inhalant of its sweet perfume.
Asked to sit awhile beneath
her lavender bush,
which grows more beautiful with age,
and be reminded that true friends
have life-giving powers of their own
and will never leave,
just as lavender’s gentle fragrance
will linger in the memory
long after the blossoms have dried.
Herbal magic she has learned,
has cultivated,
has shared with only a few.
Lavender, the keeper of promises,
the keeper of secret wishes.
Silent lavender stalks
that evoke poetic phrases.
Lavender blossoms
that scent her
dreams each night.
Lavender bouquets
given in friendship
that continue to bloom
with unconditional love
when nothing else will.
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