Hands in the Soil - Sept 12 2024

 

Hands in the Soil

Sept 12 2024

He is at his happiest

under a big floppy hat

kneeling on the grass

with his hands in the soil.

Toiling in the sun

on a hot summer day,

wrestling with rocks

heaving timbers into place.

The landscaper

I hired to rescue the flower beds.

Which are a botanist’s fantasy

of metastasizing plants

in compacted soil,

battling with leggy weeds

that are steadily edging them out.

Which, despite the fancy Latin names

I’m sure they have

look disturbingly alien,

as if trafficked

from a faraway planet

to my backyard.

I want him to build a garden

worthy of a photo-spread

in some glossy magazine.

Which is an unlikely ambition

for someone like me,

who prefers simplicity

and doesn’t care what others think

     . . . or so I smugly tell myself.

Perhaps a corrective

to my wilful blindness

and years of neglect?

But I suspect my happy gardener

prefers the doing

to the having done,

no matter how beautiful it turns out.

Because he’s all about the journey,

the being,

the moment in the sun;

the labour

in and of itself.

I know that destination vs journey

is a tired cliché,

but how better to say

something so true?

And looking out

from air conditioned comfort

through tinted glass,

I must confess I’m feeling envious.

Because has found his place and purpose,

while I’m still searching

for both.

Sure, a presentable garden

and showplace home.

But no sweat and toil and healing sun.

No sure grip

on time worn tools

that come easily to hand.

No rich black soil

under my nails

I can’t scrub out.

And certainly not the sausage fingers and callused skin

of the working man

who has worked all his life,

the strong hands

hardscrabble farmers

and master carpenters have.

Big hands

that make mine feel like frail little birds

lost in theirs,

bony cold appendages

in warm generous flesh.

Hands

so practised

in the landscaper’s art

they could almost do the job

all by themselves.