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My neighbor talks to
flowers,
the sprinklers, the grass,
to her knees, to
her two-step ladder --
it doesn't matter what.
She urges each to give their all,
cajoles her pains away, demands
steadfastness as she climbs
another rung, makes clear
she'll brook no nonsense
or dismay from all her snipping.
I respect her exuberance
for
conversations with a reality
I had not formerly surrendered to.
Yet strangely, from a physics
point of view, she's
quite the quantum gardener:
a ripple in the univeral field/an
intimate companion of all objects
on this side of the cosmos
and the distant other--
that is, at one with all things.
She flows along a different
stream--
Ophelia on a raft.
I don't mean simply that she plays
at talking to pass the time, to
amuse herself with idle noise
and pretend-conversation. No--
she is in contact with another
view
of things,
a parallel universe, I think--quite real.
It makes me question how firm
is where I set my feet, how sharp
the edges of my squares, how pure
the joys of paradise.
David
Spielberg was born in Brooklyn when horse drawn vegetable wagons
still plied the streets. He is a PhD physicist (City University
of New York) and teacher. Spielberg also publishes the quarterly
poetry procedings, "Dead or Alive Poetry Society," dedicated to
the Palm Beach poetry scene. For three years he was a radio essayist
and commentator for National Public Radio affiliate WHOR in Wilmington
NC. Like nature, he abhors a vacuum.
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