The Jobless Gardener

Midnight and all the hours in between. Outside, a milky shroud covers everything in the dark, the weighty noose of lead about the lungs. My glasses fog and everything familiar becomes alien. The ankle isn't quite right yet so I hobble past the rabbit family, the last of the rose blooms, the dying gardens and the sleeping churches of suburbia. The hush of empty consciousness makes it better.

Love and gardens.

It is peaceful to water where a thing grows naturally; otherwise, manipulation, dishonesty, and the hard work of managing death. Love pushes through the black soil and quickly the mechanical mind adheres a label: selfish, ordained, forever, foolish, safe, thirsty. We transplant and graft according to our own design, negating the origin of birth. Love cannot be destroyed, so it ages in cultivation. Yet what of the native, wild swell that must expand and exist outside of our beliefs? The jobless gardner could only sit zazen as a conduit in front of the effortless amplification of that which must grow.

Instead, work – not altogether unhappy or meaningless. But what would happen if the plants decided? What arrangement of love would reshape our yards, our fields, our toil?

Perhaps the salvation of the world starts with a small willingness to let it grow.