wildscape. literary journal

Gardener
by Benjamin Goodman

Not yet in my true leaves, I’d wake to
the only sun I’d ever know, dreamful, 
precious to some, myself an urge to grow.

In the idea of a day, I’d wade down the road
unpainted, as the gale passed over, the shroud,
kicking up leaves in the rain.

Such long light to which I gave my boyhood.
I had to earn my way out of the dark.
I used to shout in the dark.

The human slumbers under nothing.
He sings and sometimes dreams 
of an age turned over. The way I was

taught to tend the soil, those long lives
my soul shed. Striped shirt,
a boy in the rough with the stuff of life

in his hands so small. Watching 
the worms touch. Wondering about carrots. 
I shook a bag out on the lawn like a sandman.

about the author // Benjamin Goodman