sonora2sonoma

The dismantling of all the signs of a life once lived . . .

the cleaned-out garage, the house,

emptied of its belongings,

the absence of the plants that once lined the path

leading to the front door,

the empty garden behind the house,

the curtain-less windows,

the fresh paint, the repairs made

helping erase all evidence

of the someone

for whom this place had served, for decades,

as Home.

 

The almost total absence of what once was,

the trees

that used to shade the entire area

behind the house

on a sunny afternoon.

Those trees

now cut down.

The coziness their shade provided

now missing

the light streams into the space

without resistance,

imbuing the scene with the characteristics

and feel

of another place and time.

 

The old fence out back

dilapidated and falling down,

the one she’d said she would never have been able

to afford to have fixed,

now vanished, replaced

by a shiny new fence,

its bright reddish wood

a stark counterpoint to the old, worn gray patina

of its predecessor.

 

And oh, the garden!

the garden that once was;

the garden of roses, of fuchsias and civil disobedience,

of English cucumbers and Sun Gold tomatoes and opportunity

and her beloved Flammes;

the garden of taking a stand,

of principal;

the garden of political resistance

to arbitrary overreach by those

who find it difficult

to mind their own business without also trying

to mind everyone else’s business;

the garden that served to steel the resolve of its tender

in the struggle of opposition to conformity,

and rejection of mediocrity;

the garden that nourished the spirit

of the one who tended it;

The garden whose absence

impacts my senses more profoundly

than ever did the flowers

in all their glory.

 

Each time I behold it,

each time I pass that place,

I find myself stricken with awe,

enveloped in melancholia,

consumed by the need

to assign meaning–

to restore order–

to the disarray left behind

by the suspension of activities,

the break in continuity,

occasioned by her departure.

 

The complete erasure of a person

and the place they held

in their society

in their community,

an event not uncommon

yet somehow incomprehensible,

a regular event, yet without parallel

in recognition of each person’s individual uniqueness,

and, with regard

for those whose lives she touched,

an event fraught with emotion,

the flood of feelings thus produced

seeking redress, remedy, recompense.

 

Once that light’s gone out,

the sense of presence that used to fill the place

ought to linger,

evaporating

at the pace of moss

growing over stepping stones

previously worn smooth by the bustle

of many footsteps.

 

It should not depart with the furniture!

 

Maybe, once the commotion has died down,

it will make its presence known

in small and subtle ways

though that was never her nature.

Hopefully, it won’t disturb

the next occupants.

 

Come Spring, when she would have been

putting out her bedding plants

it will hit me

“there will be no garden there this year.”

 

7 February 2016

Tim Konrad