You're in the garden; You're where John is,
in the dirt, abstracted, holding his green trowel.
This is how he gardens: fifteen minutes of intense effort,
fifteen minutes of ecstatic contemplation. Sometimes
I work beside him, doing the shade chores,
weeding, thinning the lettuces; sometimes I watch
from the porch near the upper garden until the twilight makes
lamps of the first lilies: all the time,
peace never leaves him. But it rushes through me,
not as sustenance the flower holds
but like bright light through the bare tree.