Water Flows Into A Garden

At Kent State the flea-market-cruising roommate girls Discovered the retro charm of 1930's jackets Square-shouldered seriousness dissolved in giggles Adornment rituals for young female bonding They practiced anthropology outside of class Gypsy skirts and calico were their true colors In the brick cafeteria, Heidi made them giddy Shaping broccoli forests around lakes of gravy The currents of their young lives were far from sluggish Rushing over the state-run rocks of a sedimentary college They threw up white spray into the sun And sometimes the torrent carried them to Water Street But it carried them further It gave Heidi the passion to dig for Indian relics To follow the Ghost Dance into college and museum And be professional, helping frowsy-haired collegians And marry the same man and house for over 20 years Once at Kent State, she played a little fascination game with plants on window sills Now the stream of water has flowed down the years To a lush comical garden, floral foolishness nodding in the sun She runs among the drooping, boobish blooms, in a frenzy Weeding, rooting, squirting, like an East European immigrant Potting and pruning, rampaging among the biomass She has trained herself to attack every flaw in the whole dirt-plant cycle Her arms raised up and out at the elbows She is over them, orchestrating their advent in timed explosion Floral firework progression Next to a comical English garden gate Framing the contented domestic sunny backyard Perfect inspection ground for nodding old man glances All this the water has brought her The channel running in accustomed course For a long time it will continue, far from destination Little fear of rapids or wide confused seasonal floods Once up near the stream-head in the chime of laughing water We thought we heard elves singing in the forest Now in middle reaches, we flow steadily past farmland Twilight will gradually steal up Plants on the bank exude the smell of sap Deep pellucid Maxfield Parrish sky Stars show in empty, glimmery reaches This will be the time when river reaches estuary, the delta country No clear-cut bank on which to stand and view the water But in the main channel, the broad back of the river Flows at the same time into ocean and night