Jardin du Poète

The garden’s ancient walls are low and broken
and thus (yes, “even at my age”) easy
to scale. They say this was a garden Goethe
adored. I see him sketching¹: helichrysum,
angelica (whose name reminds him of . . . )
and focused: parsing² genus, species, love.
I’m sure he knew that cypress³ is the tree
that marks Italian cemeteries⁴, death
embodied⁵ in the dark green spears that gesture
toward heaven. I inhale⁶ : crisp vetiver,
grapefruit and orange so pungent⁷ that I’m thrust
back to another garden, where I learned
of bitter oxymoron in the sweet
and luscious⁸ fruit he fed me, piece by piece;
the faintly musky warmth of his embrace;
the ancient stone walls crumbled⁹, and my trust.