The Gardener

Caitríona O'Reilly

The menu warned that fish caught locally 

 may contain dangerous levels of cadmium 

 and isotopes -- or was it allotropes? --

 I didn't care ... 

That night, after the lecture, 

 I sweated through dinner with a clever man 

 who displayed his cleverness decorously, 

 like the secretary bird its quills. 

 Did he notice the beads glistening in my philtrum 

 like the shine off the poisoned Pacific? 

And I wondered what dangerous dust I had inhaled, 

 to make my breath so difficult, 

 as I lay in the cheap hotel on Kearny Street, 

 counting the notches on a plastic thermometer 

 and feverishly dialling your number 

 across half the blacked-out globe. 

Earlier, I'd looked for pelicans on Alcatraz Island 

 and seen none, and tried to imagine 

 the suffering of the celebrity hoodlum 

 contemplating the saved in their bliss 

 across the deadly strait, in the eternal city.

The phone rang out twice in the empty house 

 as it had rung out so often in that other house, 

 and my panic was almost theatrical 

 until your voice, warm and close, 

 reminded me again of the notes I'd made 

 of the words of the island's only gardener: 

I kept no record of my failures, 

 and there were many.... The main thing 

 was to assure some success by trying many things 

 and holding onto those plants which had learned 

 that life is worth holding onto, 

 even at its bitterest.