You might find me weeping today in the garden.  Today, on a day of immeasurable beauty.  No man or woman or child has ever seen, made, or been to such a place.

It started last night after coming home from a party… all I wanted to really do was flee to the garden, to the night, the moon and the stars, hidden now by these blazing cities of  light.   Even neighbors have their floodlights on, aimed at the garden so it looks pretty to them sitting there in their living room and looking at if from far away… they are lighting up the beds of birds and squirrels and raccoons, skunks and moths and caterpillars, tiny scary spiders and goodness knows, even those despicable possums.. the sad little demons of the underworld who look so sad, and are, because the world hates them so….. now even they cannot sleep because they cannot close the blinds against these infernal human nights.

My garden is dark … I let the trees and shrubs grew wide and tall and maybe they are a little too wide and too tall….. but not for me. They hide the houses and the lights, the wires and the windows, the TV’s blaring screens….. they hide all the small restless animals who also need their sleep and dreams, and I hear them there in the quiet velvet of the night, and they feel and see and hear me too, while I wander there in the dark thanking God for every leaf, tree, shrub and flower that graces this small world of mine… smaller than small, insulated, internal, lonely, maybe solitary, but I wouldn’t have it any other way.

The wine tastes better in the garden, the coffee, the tea, even water from a tap.  But the wine this dark and breezy evening… the breeze like some enchanted temptress in the dark, the ruffles of that breeze scented with the black earth still slightly damp from Wednesday’s storm, the small pieces of cut grass drying from Francisco’s mowing Thursday, the air delicious from the roses dying on the arbor and the petals falling on the lawn… the grapes still green and hard but ripening, the goldenrod starting, just starting, the Japanese anemones in full bloom across the street in the park… and outside in my front garden they are growing miraculously inside a huge arborvitae and decorating it like some kind of summer Christmas tree…. and inside the tiny tired birds are sleeping….

There was a spider weaving its intricate lacy web outside my window… I saw it ten o’clock last night while I peered outside to see if there was a star or moon or night bird out there weeping… I thought I heard them moaning, a slight murmuring of ancient sadness that we have sometimes in late August, when things are starting a little bit to  open up their mouths as though to say something, or sightly raise the leaf or hand as if in greeting but they are really saying goodbye.

There were strong gusts last night, strong enough to bang the hanging pots against the house walls and windows, the doors were rattling, and the evergreens  were scratching the guest room windows upstairs like an angry someone clawing to get in… the spider in its own web was dancing, moving up and down and side to side and the moon was rather bright and I could see that spider dancing there… I counted and saw it had eight legs….. up and down and sideways it was slowly dangling and even dancing, and then the spider turned completely upside down as though to show my startled googly eyes ..”.oh look at me and see what I can do!”….. it was so strange and so unique I had to turn away because I could have watched that spider into eternity…

The things we see when we are alone… the things we know.. the things we hear….the things we taste so desperately…. so breakfast…. and it was good.. the potatoes, peppers and onions, the chicken sausages the size of my little fingers… oh what delicious sausages!  Like a farmer like a lumberjack like a hunter like the old-time fisherman I am not… I ate that breakfast as though I worked hard labor for ten years, as though I worked for 24 hours straight, as though I was a fireman or policeman saving helping dousing everything with Balm of Gilead…..thank you Ms. Amy Lou…. the soft scrambled eggs with cream and butter, the herbs fresh from the garden  (though the chives are growing in a thicket of weeds and gravel and dandelions… but no one needs to know).

I am a wanderer in my garden in the night I am a wanderer in the world now without light I live in solitary confinement here in my small circle of trees and shrubs and flowers and grasses… that I water, weed, lament and complain over.  Oh these weary feet of mine now have walked up and down these paths for almost twenty years… I have seen trees cut down all around me houses going up like mammoths all around me.  Sometimes I just want the big dinosaurs to come and eat it all up again. Everything –the houses, the garden and all the tree-killers, all the speeding noisy cars and their exhaust… and please please me…… even those yapping little dogs everywhere day and night that are never silent…..

I am so tired now. Exhausted.  Exempt. Deleted. Erased even from my own memory of what I was, am, and what I wanted to be.  The lack of clarity the lack of understanding anything anymore, even wanting anything human any more… can wear you out… oh but now I remember the tiny delicious happiness of the lingonberries…

I found a small round jar with a beautiful label, even the lid was all swirly and curvy and pretty.   I opened it and served it with the toast for breakfast.  Oh My God!  Why do we invoke God the supreme being to express our joy at something so simple, a piece of pie or cake a chocolate chip cookie? A ham sandwhich.   But these preserves… they had tiny tiny tiny little berries the size of peppercorns, they were plump nuggets of silent juiciness…. bright cherry red and they popped in your mouth and your mouth exploded in red juice that was tart and sweet and mellow and slightly acidic and was better than strawberries, cherries, raspberries put together, or maybe it was all of them rolled into one… and the juice, the bright slightly jammy juice was like a luscious summer elixir created by little fairies just to put on your Trader Joe sprouted wheat toast.  Oh My God Oh My God my breakfast friend probably thought I was bereft of reason and finally tasted the lingonberry preserves too… silence…..he thought it was good,  but I thought in my solitary lonely departing summer requiem that it was SENSATIONAL…. oh my mouth was singing oh my mouth was thinking how delicious it would be on vanilla pudding tapioca pudding custard ice cream blinis little pancakes sponge cake with whipped cream….. Oh Sweden Thank you!  Thank you all you happy little icy blonde healthy Swedish ones dancing around the maypoles in Bergman’s garden …..

I digress from the loneliness of this August summer day…. I have not even finished the breakfast dishes I talked to my sister who lives so far away for over an hour I looked at the same two butterflies floating in and out of my garden for an hour…. I listened to three little dogs shrieking outside my front garden and told them and their owners to shut up…… I walked back defiantly down the long gravelly driveway while they told me to shut up silently………actually the driveway is not that long….. I wish it was a mile long I wish it was a century long I wish it was a whole galaxy long and we were all away from each other….. and walking down the driveway I saw the big pots of tomatoes that are a little sad too because August has not been hot enough the morning glories I let them grow now  on the gravel driveway and they turn their purple heads to me and say enough is not enough….. and the big squash that I transplanted a few weeks ago is growing next to a miserable tiny tomato but it seems very happy and then I remember earlier what was there and it was so tiny and so solitary even more solitary than me…

Earlier there was a humming bird in the garden… just as we were sitting down to have coffee there… sitting in two chairs that I placed right outside the back door so you can watch the birds bathe in the bird bath and they won’t get scared….. birdsong all around and those two butterflies flying… one monarch and the other the deep dark black one with yellow and five indigo blue dots …..there it was the humming bird way back in the garden and I called out its name and it flew in and out and then quickly went away…

The garden calls out again the monarch is hanging upside down from a dark lavender Buddleia flower joining all the other solitary dancers singers trapeze artists in the tiny sanctuary there….. and now I remember after everyone was gone and I went back again and sat there in the garden drinking the cold coffee from those small white cups with the circle of gold around the rim… the ones my mother so excitedly gave me one Christmas Eve… there it was the hummingbird, come back closer and closer almost to my very chair entertaining me with all sorts of upside down and sideways flying and dancing and it was a  very very tiny hummingbird tinier even than most, and it danced and danced away all by itself in my garden and it knew and I knew we both knew that we were solitary partners now in this solitary garden that will never ever go away…

Solitary