The Gardener

Caitríona O'Reilly

The menu warned that fish caught locally

may contain dangerous levels of cadmium

and isotopes -- or was it allotropes? --

I didn't care ...

That night, after the lecture,

I sweated through dinner with a clever man

who displayed his cleverness decorously,

like the secretary bird its quills.

Did he notice the beads glistening in my philtrum

like the shine off the poisoned Pacific?

And I wondered what dangerous dust I had inhaled,

to make my breath so difficult,

as I lay in the cheap hotel on Kearny Street,

counting the notches on a plastic thermometer

and feverishly dialling your number

across half the blacked-out globe.

Earlier, I'd looked for pelicans on Alcatraz Island

and seen none, and tried to imagine

the suffering of the celebrity hoodlum

contemplating the saved in their bliss

across the deadly strait, in the eternal city.

The phone rang out twice in the empty house

as it had rung out so often in that other house,

and my panic was almost theatrical

until your voice, warm and close,

reminded me again of the notes I'd made

of the words of the island's only gardener:

I kept no record of my failures,

and there were many.... The main thing

was to assure some success by trying many things

and holding onto those plants which had learned

that life is worth holding onto,

even at its bitterest.