Village Gardens

These gardens in the village are small brothers,
And pretty pindling samples, to the others
That sweep from the mauve maples to the sky
Three hills away and carry on the eye
Till the furrows meet, and life seems plain
As the high sun, bright curlews, and the rain.
But village plowland does the best it can
To put a solitude around a man
And show him something that he is inside.
A garden need not be so very wide
To have a mystery in it and a power
To turn plain dirt to plants or to a flower.
Maybe it is so small a piece of land
A man will have to plow it all by hand,
For even a horse that’s borrowed from a neighbor
Has to have a longitude for labor.
That is too bad, for horses add a strength
To joy in gardening far beyond their length.
Yet earth smells good wherever people find it,
And village bees do not appear to mind it
For being just a little bit of earth,
They flow over it in fiery mirth
Like golden beads from some tremendous string
Broken by the sharp sun of the Spring.