The garden winds and grows
like a fern-flesh snake, quick bites into our skin, lush
venom into the blood and solidifies itself there
like cell growth, like a metamorphosis
of lifeblood containing elements of peat,
river water and whiskey.
The trees surrounding the garden are still. Quiet.
Leave them be, grandmother said,
it’s none of our business, the trees.
The soil is thick and radiant with
bones and memory. It is a haunting,
as much as anything else.
Deserted diaries and buried letters tangled
in the thistle, nettles, burs. Hardened women
are grown out here in the garden. Hands dry and coiled
tight around expectations, the refusal to abandon hope.
Photo Courtesy: Shalev Cohen, Unsplash
Ashling Meehan-Fanning
Judge’s Comment:
A reflection of the strength within the divine feminine, “Grown, in the Garden” is rich with allusion: the Garden of Eden, the gardens of poetic tradition, where women have so often been made to bear the burden of shame. Here, however, the garden is reimagined as a place where women are grown from “bones and memory,” where hope is chosen despite hardship, and the trees are left to themselves because, as grandmother said, “it’s none of our business.”