Perennial Garden

In the garden, I followed your eye,
called them lamb’s ear and primrose,
stroked the small alert faces
turned up like sparks of a distant moon.
And forgot this was an afternoon in May,
forgot I was a woman and a mother.
How high we were, the houses below specks
of angular darkness. You moved
in and out of shade, suddenly far away soothing
the fierce new flower heads, their
busy electric yellow. Then the moment
passed and I was human again. Over and over
I asked you names, hungry
for something, as if we could coin color
and substance and scent
right there, out of black earth.
The owner let us roam—strangers—she, trusting
of a certain wonder. Look, you whispered,
look at these lilies of the valley. . . .
In a perfect hush we stood
world so conscious and
all at once all of it indifferent to us
as if we had no names, as if our lives, edged
and thick and dragged for years behind us,
had never happened.