On your birthday I will take you to the Botanical Gardens
and you will not be disappointed!
I.
We’re scornful of those who claim they love red roses best–yet here, in this garden, surrounded by 600 varieties, we find ourselves drawn toward the reddest.
Shamefully, we kneel beside these red, red roses while a kind stranger takes our picture.
The map informs us: 13 lawns, 11 gardens, 6 fountains, 4 greenhouses, 3 arboretums,
2 ponds, 2 forests, 1 river, 1 marsh, 1 Library of Botany & Horticulture.
Hope fills us.
“I can’t believe that boat is still on the pond! They always put it out at the beginning
of summer and put it away at the end,” we eavesdrop on someone more knowledgeable.
A little white boat with a green awning, anchored dead center in the pond–
how does anyone get to it? This question irks one of us and delights the other.
Fall’s here, yet the boat’s there; we accept miniature green Bibles from a man on the lawn.
We’re startled by strangers approaching us to ask deceptively simple questions.
Do you have the time? Where’s the Pavilion? Have you seen any restrooms?
These questions, these hopeful, puzzled faces, set something abuzz in us,
and it’s a while before our hearts return to normal.
A birthday prank: I’ll yank your pants down in the middle of the promenade.
A birthday lie: I bought you the hermit’s cottage by the river where greenish ducks glide.
A birthday magic trick: When I count your blessings,
I sometimes have far too few fingers for the task and sometimes far too many.
You like the smell of roses? I can’t believe you like the smell of roses.
Well I do.
II.
At six o’clock they begin to kick us out of the Botanical Gardens. Clear out, clear out.
Nearing the gate we come to understand how little we’ve seen.
Miles of pathways have eluded us. Millions of plants remain unobserved.
It is good not to have seen everything!
It prevents the world from draining of magic!
Or so we tell ourselves.
Passing the Library of Botany & Horticulture, wide white steps summon us upward.
Yet the Library is closing just now. The guard doesn’t care about our enthusiasm.
We catch a glimpse of atrium as tall wooden doors swing shut. A bolt sliding.
We shall never see anatomical drawings of orchids.
Outside the Library of Botany & Horticulture, a fountain, thank god,
but no coins in our pockets with any dates that mean anything.
Just 1979, 1994, 1983, 2002. So we stand there, tossing nothing, wishless,
observing the violence on the face of the nymph and the horses with fins instead of hoofs.
On the other side of the weeping dwarf tree, an oval of sunlight. The pensive grass.
Clear out, everyone! Clear out!
The horn of warning blares again. Twisted by our absurd, nostalgic ears,
it sounds like the trumpet of a unicorn hunter.
Clear out!
(Beauty should not be stared at directly; it should only be glimpsed.
Otherwise it runs the risk of becoming familiar.)
Accidentally we buy expensive tickets for a train we don’t need. We’re so poor, so stupid.
But these tickets mean that sometime this winter we will return to the Botanical Gardens.
Snow and thorns, a handful of poisonous berries. At least this is what we tell ourselves.
(For example: Six red leaves on a still-green tree. But I’m sorry.
Even putting words to it is like staring at it for too long.)
