Thou Shalt Not Enter

Should by chance you happen to
pass by on the street you might glance
toward our garden extending to public
view, colourful and lovingly tended
a nod to the outside world where
gardens and the delights they hold
are generally acknowledged to
represent a pastime of those retired
no longer commuting to workplaces
consuming their energy and undivided
attention. Ours is such a one which
grew over the years as though invested
with a life of its own, which fairly well
does describe its reality, belying the
fiction that pottering about in a garden 
results in a living demonstration of 
boundless nature's exquisite bounty. Yet it 
is nature at whose command the garden
tends itself to delight us. Should you by
chance or intention stroll up the
cobble pathway it will turn inward
toward our house branching within
a hidden refuge enclosed by a very
secret garden, one which admits none
but ourselves to breathe its divine scent
admire the landscape of our hidden
conceit, our Paradisiacal arras of the
senses, sensual and so privately ours.