The Cyborg Gardener

“I love the herbaceous in nature,”
she thinks, plunging her trowel into the rich dark loam
with the prosthesis that clumsily moves
where her right arm once danced with precision.
“I love eloquent stems that stand proudly erect
like the crocus, heralding the end of winter,
and the tulip, announcing spring’s arrival.
You are the colorful counterpoints to my scars,
delicate reminders of the strong, but fragile limb I lost.”

She knows in her heart that her garden has become
a refuge where she can speak her mind without fear.
with no one to hear and comment in disagreement.
“My life is plebian, not aristocratic,” she muses,
“but I surround myself with the trappings
of the patrician, with gardens and pathways
ringing a beautiful fountain, fed by an artesian spring
gurgling happily through the genitals of a curly haired boy
casually relieving himself into a lily-lined bowl.”
“This,” she speaks aloud,
“is where Pegasus rent the earth with his hooves,
and the fount of Hippocrene burst forth
to water my garden, and my soul.”

Pausing to wipe her brow,
she turns her gaze to a pair of witch hazel shrubs
and ‘the bramble,’ as she lovingly calls her dog rose.
“These beauties break the pattern,” she murmurs to herself,
forgiving them their woody stalks, and the rose’s rough thorns.
“It takes a cyborg like me to prune
my wild-growing prickly beauty,” she chuckles,
“the thorns can find no purchase on my marriage
of plastic and metal with the organic.
It defeats the assaults of your daggers”
she says to the pink flowered plant,
“and your friend there with the egg shaped leaves
and slender yellow flowers hanging like straps,
makes a wonderful salve for when you do get me!”

Her day’s tasks accomplished, she stands and sighs deeply,
thinking, “my flowers don’t care about my deformities,
my scars, my twisted patchwork of repairs to God’s handiwork.
My garden is my lifeline to the natural
lest the plastic and space age alloys taint my blood, fuse with my flesh,
and I become something more artificial than human.”
A pause, and she wryly comments out loud, but truly, to herself,
“I wonder if my solitude shows it may already be too late?”


Author's Note: Another Jigsaw Poem, 10 words given by friends Margo and Dave Klang. Words are eloquent, bramble, organic, witch hazel, cybord, artesian, Pegasus, herbaceous, tulip and plebian. Still needs some work, I fear. The picture is there but ...