David K. Leff, Essayist, Poet, Lecturer

Garden (poem)

God Almighty first planted a garden.
                            Francis Bacon

Bowed as if in prayer, back-sore
from pulling weeds, fingers
caked in dirt, sweat trickling down
my cheeks, I’m in thrall to green
tomatoes, silent daylily bells, tiny
coreopsis suns, and the concentric
ruffled petals of red floribunda
roses heavy with perfume.

Conspiracy of raindrops and hands,
sunshine and a systematic mind,
my garden is stationary but not
still. It’s of the moment, moving
in time with kaleidoscopic
shifting colors and shapes, new sprouts,
fresh buds and fading blossoms,
leaves upright then prostrate.

Needy as a toddler, enduring cold
and drought, fighting insects
and funguses, the garden grows
the gardener and lasts only
as long. Order will fade in rank
rewilding when I’m fully entangled
in life’s web, compost at last,
resting from the work of creation.

Cross-Border Library

In an age of walls and fences, it’s likely the most subtle of all the world’s marked international boundaries—just a thin black line angling across terrazzo and hardwood floors. You can cross and recross as often as you like. You can stand with a foot in each country. No one asks for your passport, how long you are staying, or demands to know your business. Welcome to the Haskell Free Library & Opera House, perched on the boundary between Stanstead, Quebec and Derby Line, Vermont.

Outside the library, the presence of a political frontier was much more evident when my wife Mary and I visited not long ago. Bright orange traffic cones delineated the border through a grassy area on the building’s east side where we parked. On the west, Border Patrol agents watched us from white SUVs stationed at a street blocked with large flower pots not far from a low obelisk serving as the official marker. Unused to entering a library under government surveillance, it was creepy at best.