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Imagine if you were
a surgeon and
a gardener,
all those microbes
to be rinsed free
of flesh.
Imagine if you were
the patient
waiting
to be disrobed
probed, opened,
released
from the snapping
turtle-jaws of worry,
sedated with impersonal, precise mercy.
Imagine if you were
the surgeon’s
plants
singing in a summer
shower, feeling
skillful fingertips
train your stems
daily. Such an intimate
act:
your very
root dirt
manipulated, examined.
Imagine if you were
the gardener’s surgeon,
treating calluses,
thorn-pricks,
feeling radish-toughened muscles
under sun-beaten skin.
Imagine if you,
as the surgeon,
have dulled your
finger pads with gardening,
must resign,
devote all your time to your garden.
The surgeon will not
have a gardener
who lies
so installs himself
in that earthy position
above
all possibility of
creeping corpuscles;
thinks: vines not vessels,
bulb not ovary,
seed not tumor,
leaves as translucent
as skin.
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