Bruce Taylor: "Gardening as a Form of Worship"

To bring us to our knees.
To bring us back to quiet.
Inclined as we are
to this labor and attention.

Where there’s little
choice but to begin
with the intensive
care of the present.

Grub up the dying,
start with something new.
Deprive the bad
and nurture the good.

Simple stuff it seems
at first, herbs drying,
a red flood ripening
upon a cool and shady sill.

The blue cold’s cluster
in the morning glory vines.
The ardor of the marigold
gone ethereally green.

"Gardening as a Form of Worship" by Bruce Taylor, from The Longest You've Lived Anywhere: Poems New & Selected 2013 (Upriver Press, 2013). © Bruce Taylor. Reprinted by permission of the poet.

Art credit: Untitled image by unknown photographer.