When people ask me what I’ll do when I am older,
I will tell them: I will design tools
I’ll go back to school
And get my MSW
I’m going to move out
Of my parent’s house.
I’ll probably be touring.
I’ll be running my own thrift store.
And I will build a garden.
When I first open the garden doors
I'll plant irises at the base of the douglas firs.
A path of black gleaming slate will lead to the bird bath at the garage
And you will be standing there.
With a straw hat
And RM Williams

Smiling, because in 30 years,
We’ll engrave our names
Into one of the trunks.
And you?
You’ll laugh in this garden,
As we celebrate the day you came home with us
every year under the same night sky;
and you? When you greet me at the gate
I’ll hug you like it was 2018 again
And we’ll sit down and smoke, much to the chagrin
Of our family, and shoot the shit.
And you?
Duly wedded, life partners, bringing instruments
And kin and we sit in the sparse vintage folding chairs
And you? I’ll tell you something:
You’ll meet your brother in this garden,
A 3rd birthday gift
And you can hold him here!
In this garden, we’ll swing him through the sprinkler;
He’ll scream and laugh, and in this garden
I’ll hug you goodbye,
I’ll hold you as you head out the back door like it’s the last time.
For one day it will be.
And you, and you, and you
When we open together the wooden garden doors.
Wave to the irises,
And sit beneath the firs.

Walk into the garage
recall all the trash we
Got rid of and all the junk that’s still there.
Don’t you remember what we built in this garden?
The boxes buried, the compost, and the fallen apples
This garden, with every gloomy corner, every bright blade grass,
Each one whispering what Dad used too:
‘How’s my grass seed growing back there?’
He neglected to talk about the lawn mower,
But I know he wanted me to keep the grass short.
This garden was so young once.
I have dulled in tandem with those black slates we walked on.
But you, you are here regularly with me, smoking and cracking jokes
And turning our hearing aids up.
When we were young, we spent every moment together
For each moment’s newness.
Now we sit together because we’re too old
To be too far apart.
I have trouble remembering
The name of the (castle).
I know what it looked like though.
I guess there are some speakers tucked away back here.
How could we have listened to all that music?
In this garden?

We were just talking about leaving;
The click of the garden door latch
When you close it one more time.
I don’t hear that much anymore
The crystalline clink of the closing garden doors,
That lead to the irises at the base of the firs.

I travelled to Quebec, to scatter your ashes
I cried as you went down the Coulonge.
You always loved the water.
And this garden, is still here.