Garden of Secret Desires

A cared-for garden
is a social community
a gathering of living creation
lovingly designed, carefully crafted
and nurtured year after year after year
to become a garden of secret desires
satisfying the gardener
with the success of an apparition
of Eden. Its cohesion and
tidy obedience to the wishes
of its maker requiring merely
a nip here, a tuck there
with the serious business of
fashioning the garden 
to appear as natural as though
nature herself languidly
ordered her creatures to align
themselves according to her
desires. The garden, a prized
facsimile of an original
poses as an authentic creation in 
deference to the tender conceit
of the gardener who never
ever thinks of the enterprise 
as but a franchise. On loan
till that time when the gardener
no longer exists and it can
wistfully return to its maker.