Metamorphoses: Sri Lanka |

Souvenirs

Dipti Desai

The Gardener

Poem by Ramya Chamalie Jirasinghe

A small bamboo plant is pushed firmly into
the earth.
It will grow precariously, high
above the ground.
This is a Japanese Garden
on an apartment balcony,
its design fed everyday in the gardener’s heart.

But the gardener has reached out across
the borders.

Now, no concrete ledges, nor time
differences, nor continental oceans
can hold back all that is pouring
into his temperate world.

The walls have burst
and everything
larger than that he is, is flooding in.
Monsoon torrents. Tropical heat.

Suddenly the gardener lets
go of
designs and titles.
He dances with the plants. The peat.
The rocks. The water. The air.
The light blinds him.
He knows only that
the heat of the sun searing his skin,
the rain scouring the bamboo earth,
will form their own design.

there are no longer hands separate from the plants bodies
separate from the land, the gardener is everything.

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