Hello all, after a really long gap between posts. Yes, life has gotten a bit in the way again, mainly due to being on holiday over the Easter period, and generally spending it socialising or crashing after socialising – ahhhh the trials and tribulations of being an introvert… wouldn’t change it for the world.

The prompt for this poem is ‘garden’, and again I wasn’t sure what it would turn out like. I’m not much of a gardener, likely because I have a very distracted mind and having the dedication and patience to look after plants every day, week on week, month on month, year on year, takes perhaps a different person than I am. That and I’ve never been a fan of the earth under my fingernails, feeling bugs crawling over my skin, kneeling down under blazing sunlight or biting wind. Maybe that will change as I get older and have my own garden to tend, but for now it’s something that I don’t have the skills or knowledge for.

But maybe that’s the issue – maybe that’s why our culture is what it is, we’re all stuck too long indoors, lost from nature, uncertain of our connection to it. Maybe, as this poem says, we’ve forgotten that the whole world is a garden, and we’ve lost the sight to see it.

Maybe all it takes is to open our eyes and see how the garden has become cluttered and unrecognisable with all our junk.

Anyway, I hope you like the poem.

The Garden

What would it be like

To have green fingers

To pick up a plant, a seed

And watch it grow?

I’ve never had much need

Or want to sift through dirt

To feel the musty earth

Stick to my fingernails

To spy a worm, a spider

A caterpillar, crawling over skin

It sends shivers up my spine

Despite the flare of colour

Every summer and spring

And the rich harvest in autumn

I only watch from afar

Observe the changes and wait

To see what nature gives instead

Without my hand to help

Does nature need support?

Or are we just boxing her in

Putting up garden fences

Staking our claim on some land

That belongs not to us

But to the ground beneath our feet

Maybe we should let her win

Instead of caging our essence in

We are not the guide, but the guided

We never left the garden

We just forgot how to see it.

Kate @ Kandid Chronicles x