and you are there and the garden is there,
as near to kin as you’ll ever be.
Close-cut lawn billowing all about you,
your eyes turn countless shades of green,
hold the keys to Eden, hidden like a pip
inside an apple. Here you are free,
not wishing the world were otherwise
or wanting one whit to change.
Its flag is Change,
this small republic of manna ash
and buckeye, mandrake and gunnera,
sparrowsong trickling through the air like hope.
Because the garden’s owned by no one,
doesn’t it belong to us all? Who’s to say
on which side of the gate the dream begins? – Linda France