You would need a thousand eyes to see it all.  The garden.   And a thousand ears to catch it all.  Every trill and whistle, every tiny peep, croak,  starting and ending note of every lullaby and every morning song…… Every tiny happy sigh or startled gasp from the tiniest bird or insect flying, crawling or sailing through the leaves and grass, and roses  that are breathing again, at last…

Woke up late.  So late again!  Six a.m. and the world already starting.  Turning.  A little  bit of crazy twirling.  The sky was so blue and the sun starting to come out and didn’t know whether to turn the puffs of sailing clouds peach or apricot or some other baby hue….

I rushed out to water because the rain didn’t come again.  First a deluge and floods and torrential rain that sounded like 10,000 soldiers marching… on my roof.. and the hail, like baseballs…the lashing  and crashing and running to the basement again and then all around the house and basement up and down the stairs to see if it was all still there…

And then, that day walking through the park, just before the storm that evening… walking and it was so still so eerie hot and quiet and even the flowers and the grasses and the big old trees were holding their breath, and the air had that glassiness that seeing things through a foggy mistiness,  seeing and hearing something hidden and dark and where were the birds hiding?  It was a glistening… I was the only one walking all the frightened people were hiding, and the park was mine mine mine alone… like the summer day in that small Russian town in the Nabokov story… that story I read somewhere and cannot find.. for years and years I have been searching for that story, because he captured it Nabokov did…. the perfect summer day in all its sad and lovely bittersweet fleeting beauty and glory.  He captured every sight and sound and human feeling, even that of every rock and weed and evaporating cloud, he captured it even like Chopin, Beethoven, Grieg and all the other musical geniuses never did….. not even Debussey…..and maybe that’s why in the end the favorite thing he liked to do was play chess with Vera in that apartment high up in the clouds in Switzerland….

The front garden how to describe it.  I can’t.  The golds and lavendars and pinks, the mottled yellows with rusty red.  I can’t.  The blues, the whites, the winey black bordeaux claret sun blooded wine rusted dahlias spreading themselves out like exotic slaves on the grassy boudoir floors… I can’t.  And the almost roaring of the purples… just that one lone morning glory sitting at the top of the Delphinium’s second blooming…..

And the sky.  It was blue and I needed to water.  And the sun was yellow like faded lemons.  Then bright again like an Aztec medallion… then faded into nothingness into a swampy mist that covered the entire sky… then the sun came out again.  Then the sky grew higher and higher and was covered in wide and thin grey mists as though Scotland was just born on your lonely little street….. and the sun completely disappeared… I watered and watered and watered for the life of me and the life of things…. oh grow my roses!  Grow and grow and grow and fill the air with your perfume that no other blossom has or has ever known…..

I watered and watered, dragging the long and heavy old green weathered hose like an ancient snake. Dragging it through gravel and stones, rocks and grass, and still the birds hid and then came out on the sidewalks and driveway and the grass and the trees and the shrubs and drank the flowered water…. the phlox are everywhere again.. in every shade of pink, dark and light and mottled and shady and dusty and dusky, and bright as your tiny little baby eyes….. and everything sparkles now it gleams and glistens and it’s moist and fresh and clean and renewed and young and supple and growing and growing again… and the air.  The air!  How can you describe the something nothing that is and isn’t there?

You would need a thousand eyes and ears and a thousand noses to breathe in all the perfume all the water and nectar and mist and tears and juices flowing now from grape and grass and flower from sky and earth and every tiny leaf…

Wordsworth, Longfellow, Tennyson, Burns and Auden, Keats and Byron and even Dylan Thomas’ “Fern Hill”,   William Butler Yeats in the “Lake Isle of Innisfree” did not capture it, and cannot, no one can and ever will …capture all this beauty .. because you would need a thousand eyes a thousand ears a thousand noses and hearts and souls and minds and you would need at least a thousand years to live and understand this one perfect day…..