Idyllwild

Idyllwild

You know about this garden.
It grows everywhere around us.
Whatever we name here emerges
lush and real from the night-
black loam.

In places empty
and fertile as this
there’s no inside or out.
No male or female.
No First. No Final.
Not a thing is
left uncreated here.
No pathway is impossible.

Turn and walk in any direction
out of that naked longing of yours-
the one we’re all born with.
You’ll come eventually
to the gold-lit idyll
of wild flowers and skulls
where the one you loved since the
beginning comes
to meet you.

Should any man tend a garden
empty and fertile as this,
he would perfect his care in time
and disappear inside that tending,
where the loved one waits for him.

Should another man spring
averse and balance on his head
-in such a garden as this-
he perfects that awful trick.
Head upon the world.
Feet upon the stars.
He comes to his beloved and
vanishes in that longing
just the same.

Where is the angel?
Where is the snake?
Whose long-decaying carcass
are those jackals feasting on?

~J