The Gardener

I often rest in my garden or by it.Even in winter when it's quiet, but still promising of the future. My chair allows me to relax, enjoy the good smells, the hazy views that the distortion of vision gives me as I recline. So many times I've laid here, watched it, could almost see it grow. My garden, I love it so.

On that day the gardener was there, He's worked for me for, I don't even now know but a very long time, watched me grow old, fight that but lose. As he trims and prunes my flowers and bushes we talk as old friend will; He knows the old times, the old people now....gone. How has he stayed so long? His answer is that mine is the only garden he now serves, pruning it and trimming it are essential to him, they persuade him that it's important to be pruned for without those simple acts, the garden would cease to be.

I know his age, a few years less than mine and yet, apart from the sun given wrinkles, he appears much younger. Asked about that he smiles, says pruning helps, just pruning. Yes, the exercise, the fresh air, the knowledge that his pruning brings happiness to me. I thank him. Thank him for his pruning all those beautiful things...
He mentions that roses, like people in some ways, do not do well if not pruned, their stalks grow stiff, unable to produce sprouts, better to be without them, that's the point of pruning, to remind the old of what was young.

I agree and laugh...perhaps old men should be pruned, to remind them of their youth, to let them see the short stalk that became long before it now withered. He agrees, smiles, and finds an errant twig that as escaped his shears. Yes, he says, men should be pruned, gives them a new outlook...

He is quiet, standing there, his loppers casually by his side, the blades barely open. We have known each other a very long time and he knows when to say whatever. He takes a magnificent red rose, cuts it, lets the head fall to the ground. He hands me the hard, full remains. He opens his clothes to show he was pruned. He looks at me.

In my garden in the sun in my nakedness what is more appropriate than to join what has given me so much pleasure? It takes but a moment to be properly, professionally pruned and, like the head of the rose, the red falls to the ground. It is a good thing to be pruned, yes, a very good thing. I can sense the newness now that I've been pruned, an awareness that what I'd often feared....cannot now happen. One of the taunts of old age lies on the ground, defeated, the fear of its loss, gone.

I look at him and look at my orbs that still hang down. Shouldn't they be pruned? He smiles, opens his coverall a bit further saying that every plant has to grow from a bulb in the ground. His, he reports, are part of my garden, he wanted that so even when he could no longer be there, he would know his bulbs grew in the soil he'd so loved for so long.

He looks at me, it's not a question or a suggestion, it's his willingness to finish the pruning. So obvious, so necessary to complete the task. I rise and we stroll looking for a place, the correct place, for my bulbs to drop and become part of my garden. We find it, I spread my legs only slightly and am pleased at the sound of my bulbs dropping on the moist ground.  

Now my garden will truly grow; I have bulbs in my soil and the promise of another garden grown for me from me. I lean back and smile in the sun. The gardener clips a bush. A lady bug crawls up my cleft looking for food which she finds as my last act of fertilization seeps out and to the ground. Every old man should be pruned, Yes, they should.