LAWRENCE LACAMBRA YPIL

Garden

THE AUTHOR HOLDS THE COPYRIGHT TO THIS POEM. THIS IS POSTED WITH PERMISSION FROM THE AUTHOR.

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When we talked about the world
we were talking about order:
a trail of grass, a fist of blooms.
My mother points to a slow
and deliberate fall of the full fruit.

“When we are dying,” she says
“when we are long gone and dead,”

And it is so easy to pretend we had a world
of choice. A green, easy tending.
The orchids tenaciously
cling to their dark barks.

We talked straight into evening,
straight into each tangled tendril
angled against dark, into dark.
If we could only hold the edgeless
in place. Night and its reckless weeds.
The light was not ours to give.

This poem is part of the collection that won First Prize for Poetry in the 2006 Palanca Awards