Sea Garden, Varna
(On the Day of the Navy)
The garden of the summer mind
mid-morning conjures Black Sea waves:
gulls riding thermals, horsemen drowned
in indigo, sailors adrift
on the streets of Odessa looking for girls
and finding the horizon dissolved
like a lozenge into petals
and gunsmoke. Whales and saxophones? –
What are gardens for? Shoals
of lavender and the many-layered greens
prove the garden a sea of sea’s
imagining and submarine
the trees’ deep answerings to trees.
Cetacean on the patio,
we loll in lazy chairs, and praise
all gardeners and saxophonists,
shore-trawling sailors in their whites,
and whales: they are the blest.
All gardens come together. Our hearts,
opening and opening like gills, are glad
as leaves tumbling seawards –
here are the old selves: bronze, patina’d.