The Garden and the Meadow

I walk in a doctored garden
Admire its engineered façade
Its diverse set of foreign flora
Its paths straight and walls hard

Good hands and minds here ordered
And put upon the land their will –
Their artistry and ingenuity
Made tidy terrace from wild hill

But as I step to the garden’s edges
Those straighter orders begin to fray
As Japanese grasses meet the native
As Chinese orchids fade away

From that meeting point I wander
Scrambling over the sturdy fence
Some odd attraction pulls me outward
A wilder lure, a baser sense

Outside the garden, the walking’s tougher
For gripping thistles enmesh my feet
Yet despite these thorns I am pulled
To wonder what wilds here I’ll meet

The order here is hidden
From the conditioned human eye
This meadow’s order is a diverse chaos
A splash, symphonic, from soil to sky

Beyond straight fences lies this scene
Where wildflowers through dense brambles grow
A microcosm of life’s ancient tapestry
Of whose annals I only begin to know

On looking back, I see the garden
(Now distant for my rambling on)
Its image is polite and perfect
Its woven pattern is naïve and young

I wonder: do those orchids and grasses
Yearn to sprawl and spread?
Each time they exceed expectation
They are clipped, and their stems are led

Each fence-side has complexity
Beyond what I may understand
But one world is boundless and renewing
The other’s contingent on careful hand

I walk in an untouched meadow
Envy its careless calm
Its ancient throng of winding wildlife
Its depths hidden and quiet charm

Old laws and lives here sustain
And through cycles bring life anew
Their whimsy and death-fearing urges
Make small sapling into gross yew

This wild place I cannot inhabit
Our foraging age is long past
And though disillusioned from the garden
I will return to its walls in the last.