I walk away from the world
but there is only the world.
No, it is my thoughts
I try to leave behind.
Thoughts of how things
could be so different if only.
But there is only the way things are.
I spend hours in the garden,
shoveling and pulling and raking.
It hails. The hail passes. The sun
blazes and then disappears.
All day I am alone with the dirt,
the spade, the preparing of a space
for things to grow. And there,
hiding beneath last year’s dead parsley,
five sprightly green parsley volunteers.
I do not want to live forever,
but there is only forever, this moment
strung together with every other moment.
It is good to be kneeling in the dirt
aware that I am practicing. Now the rain.
I continue to dig, to tug. Now sun.
The day goes by. It goes by.
I forget to try to find myself.