A secluded garden
This was the feeling this weekend: heavy, hot, humid. The Austral Summer won't let you ignore it, you must inhabit its tropical lushness until it's gone.
In the silence and solitude of my secluded garden,
I find myself.
I see a grey lizard walking up the brick wall
While I soak in the makeshift pond we usually put up in the summer.
Only my head above surface
My body covered by cool water.
Shielding me from the heavy hot air.
The cicadas are so loud it’s as if they were screaming,
Warning the heat won’t let up.
Giving heads up for tomorrow.
Lush vegetation has taken over in places
Making me forget I’m in the middle of a vast city.
In silence I forget.
The fortress of my elders keeps me safe.
Safe in my garden.
Days can linger like this
I read something, I write something
I daydream
I get nostalgic
I take a dip and dry out in the sunshine.
Slow days of summer
Smell of asado and the incessant bark
Of a neighborhood dog.
Others bark back, communicate in their code.
The cicadas are interrupted by an unruly flock of parrots.
They come for the persimmon.
Make a mess of half eaten fruit.
Pigeons prefer the grapes from the vine.
They are almost ready,
Green turning into Beaujolais.
Signaling the harvest is close.
I close my eyes and more birds chirp
And join the chorus.
Someone in the distance is flying a glider plane.
And it gets closer and closer.
Until I fear it might crash in my garden
And it goes away.
The water is crystalline and refreshing.
A world within a world.
And in that world I inhabit
Between the wild and domestic beasts.
The realm of quiet
That helps me bear the storms
From the world outside.
"Lush vegetation has taken over in places
Making me forget I’m in the middle of a vast city."
Reminds me of the parks in Tokyo, so artfully landscaped that in the heart of one, the teeming metropolis disappears entirely from awareness, and you can imagine you're in the middle of a forest, centuries in the past.