Secret Solace

This small garden this place
of mine where my hands manipulate
the soil and coax it to nurse the
tender plants that promise
a season of scent
and colour
and the ecstasy
of a landscape in miniature
that no palace grounds
could possibly give greater
pleasure in the invitation to
wander among the familiar
shrubs, the flowers
the trees whose welfare
is inextricably integrated
with my own
for the satisfaction derived
as I revel in its bewitching
beauty captured by the
camera of my eye.
This, my Eden where no
guardian angel need alert me
to the dangers of sinister
dark spirits wandering
disconsolate in the blaze
of a summer sun permitting
no unauthorized entry to
disturb the solitude and comfort
of a garden's solace for all
that goes awry in a lifetime.