Garden Diary

A garden you keep open beside your evening Each island is a place someone once lived. All of it has gone grey. You are the small light that comes back to it. How it is tended - Weave light. Drag a thread of fireflies from a well to a patch of earth. Light is what lets anything grow. - Plant what the light reaches. Lanterns, willows, a silver vine that grows across open air, a firefly bush that hurries its neighbours along. Blooms drip dew; dew allows for the next seed to bloom. - Hum to the slow ones. Hold the mouse on a plant and a lullaby plays. It grows faster while you stay. - Tend the grey chores. Some trees have gone grey with neglect. Light and company turn them green again. - Wake the island. When the garden is in harmony, the heart tree wakes, a memory returns, and the sky calls you to the next island. Come back any time. Between the islands Every memory you found hangs in the sky as a star. One small keepsake from each island stays with you and bends the rules of the gardens after it. No failing, no clock Nothing dies. Nothing has to be done today. Leave and go, come back, brush the dew off the blooms, and read the next line of the diary when it is ready to be read.