![](http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/5556/239/400/rockmeadow2.jpg)
I hadn't been there since, so I decided to return, before the snow this year, to photograph the remnants of harvest. I was pleased to find the pink and lavender makeshift peace gate. It seemed slightly worn and beset, but brighter than ever: there was peace to be found here,it said, among growing things and gardeners.
![](http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/5556/239/400/paxgate2.jpg)
Walking the labyrinth of paths between the small fenced-in plots, I was acutely aware of being a guest, a stranger, practically a trespasser. It was hard not to read wariness and warning in the glaucous eyes of the garden's overseer.
![](http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/5556/239/400/2guardian.jpg)
The overseer of the gardens in the Audubon Sanctuary had been more of an oversleeper, and a sign on the gate assured visitors (except rabbits) of their welcome. The Rock Meadow owl was wide awake. I tiptoed past.
![](http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/5556/239/400/oversleeper.jpg)
I tend to feel like a stranger, an outsider, even in the most familiar of settings. So I reassured myself this was community land and I was a part of, if not the Belmont community, at least I was a citizen in good standing of adjoining Waltham, and proximity should stand for something.
![](http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/5556/239/400/truncal2.jpg)
And, if not a gardener, I was, at least, an appreciator of gardens, full of gratitude and praise for the people who'd labored in these plots. That, also, I reasoned, should stand for something. A poet appreciates a reader; a cook appreciates a diner. Surely these gardeners would appreciate someone documenting their work.
![](http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/5556/239/400/beaded2.jpg)
The gardens, at least at this time of year, were a composite of the wild and the cultivated. Weeds were happily cohabiting with flowers and vegetables,
chrysanthemum with evening primrose,
![](http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/5556/239/400/kiss2.jpg)
sunflower with foxtail,
![](http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/5556/239/400/foxsilk2.jpg)
corn with tansy,
![](http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/5556/239/400/2veth.jpg)
tomato with toadflax,
![](http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/5556/239/400/2heads2.jpg)
dahlias and cosmos and vetch.
![](http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/5556/239/400/sunseed2.jpg)
It was as if impending winter had obliterated distinctions: all living things, humble weed
![](http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/5556/239/400/themeek2.jpg)
and prize winning rose,
![](http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/5556/239/400/lastrose.jpg)
industrious gardener and loafing photographer
![](http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/5556/239/400/foxetc2.jpg)
are in it together,
![](http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/5556/239/400/empty2.jpg)
all arising from the same mysterious Source, all headed for the same unfathomable darkness,
![](http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/5556/239/400/salon2.jpg)
and all, while the light still holds, celebrating, each in its own way,
![](http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/5556/239/400/carefree2.jpg)
the astonishing given of being here at all.
![](http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/5556/239/400/2ivoire.jpg)
The last shall be first, says the text. The meek shall inherit, the empty shall be filled. The garden of the world collapses through autumn toward winter. Recently, I sat on a rock in the bed of a dried up vernal pool, thinking
![](http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/5556/239/400/lastfruit2.jpg)
what songs sleep in the mud below my feet ? It's a long haul from ordinary time to Easter, but everything's contained within the kingdom of this moment, this mud: absence, presence, birth, death, longing, resurrection.
![](http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/5556/239/400/2troiska.jpg)
This year I hear Rilke's autumnal who has no house now differently.
![](http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/5556/239/400/2moonbean.jpg)
On Sundays, now, I sit in my new house amidst my new siblings, holding back decades of tears. Foster child of God, I still don't quite believe my good fortune. I'm stumbling awkwardly through some strange, unofficial mystagogia -- post baptism, pre-confirmation -- awaiting further instructions.
![](http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/5556/239/400/incarceration2.jpg)
They'll come to me unexpectedly, I'm sure, like the briefings handed off surreptitiously to secret agents, and they'll be labeled burn or, more aptly, eat after reading.
![](http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/5556/239/400/2lastfruits3.jpg)
But, for the time being, it's someone else's garden, a garden to which I've nonetheless been welcomed despite all my failings -- my hard heart, my arrogance, my self-importance, my misanthropy, my distraction; my scorn, my judgment, my anger, my greed, my sharp tongue. It is as in George Herbert's poem --
![](http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/5556/239/400/2green.jpg)
Love bade me welcome, yet my soul drew back,
Guilty of dust and sin.
But quick-ey'd Love, observing me grow slack
From my first entrance in,
Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning
If I lack'd anything.
![](http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/5556/239/400/2pair.jpg)
"A guest," I answer'd, "worthy to be here";
Love said, "You shall be he."
"I, the unkind, the ungrateful? ah my dear,
I cannot look on thee."
Love took my hand and smiling did reply,
"Who made the eyes but I?"
![](http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/5556/239/400/lastfruit2.0.jpg)
"Truth, Lord, but I have marr'd them; let my shame
Go where it doth deserve."
"And know you not," says Love, "who bore the blame?"
"My dear, then I will serve."
"You must sit down," says Love, "and taste my meat."
So I did sit and eat.
![](http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/5556/239/400/harrvest2.jpg)
I moved slowly through the astonishing visual gifts of the fall garden. The day grew warmer, brighter. Thank you for these things I thought, addressing an absent gardener,
for this spurred, crimson flower wilting on rusty wire,
![](http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/5556/239/400/incarnation2.jpg)
for the last light that falls on a hanging head,
![](http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/5556/239/400/lastlight.jpg)
and for three white blossoms that open, face to frost.
![](http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/5556/239/400/trinidad2.jpg)
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