A GARDEN POEM

by Robert Cording

A garden is both personal and private,
A place that is its own world,
A place that engages the imagination as well as the senses.

Among other things it is a passage to somewhere else –
To the personal and shared past its scents evoke,
To the distant places to which its forms allude.

Trees, flowers, water.
From the shade of a maple,
A warbler sings in Spring’s muscular blossomings.

Water spills from stone to stone and disappears into the pool below,
Everything is growing,
Changing with the light that dapples a patchwork of sun and shade,
And delights with quick transformations of colors.

A garden is full of the distance we call dreams.
Dreams of home, of family, of friendship.
A garden is a place that is its own world and ours.

To make a garden is to honor life and its blessings,
To make a garden is to come home.

About the Author

Robert Cording, PoetRobert Cording holds the Barrett Chair in Creative Writing at the College of the Holy Cross. The recipient of two National Endowment for the Arts grants in poetry, he has published five poetry collections: Life-list (1987), which won the Ohio State University Press/Journal award; What Binds Us to the World (1991); Heavy Grace (1996); Against Consolation (2002); and Common Life (2006). His latest collection, Walking with Ruskin, is now available in stores.