Ritualized Courtesy

It is our comforting refuge this garden
we have tended for so many years of our
lives together, a secret place of serenity
where nature's gift of beauty extends
before our eyes in a texture of sensuous
relief, the perfume of flowers and the
shapes and colours arresting attention
speaking to our aesthetic of incomparable
loveliness of form and appearance in an
exquisite miniaturization of a perfect
landscape. Our intimate Eden welcomes
an array of visitors feeling quite at home
among the trees, shrubbery and flowering
plants, needing no permission to be there
knowing they are welcome as they pick
among the offerings left out for their
delectation each day. Raccoons and
rabbits in their nocturnal surveys while
daytime brings along chipmunks, squirrels
cardinals, doves and crows all on their
very best social behaviour courteous to
one another taking what they will as they
wander, leaving the garden tidy, intact
a ritual long rehearsed and perfected.