Barry Ballard // Poetry

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Alzheimer's Garden

There is a long bending garden that breathes
in the piney shadow of what my dying
father now calls the earth, bordered like a sea
by the mind's wind-breaks for the crying
odor of death, the on-coming erosion.
See how the soul he has planted is marked
like seed-packets over bone, and the blood's ocean
leaving his hands, leaving the year's dark marks.

He asks me why the earth has turned, forgetting
that he cleared it for a Fall garden. And I
pretend that I'm not sure why, that maybe
the soil will work better this way (suggesting
we just trust the shorter days, and rely
on the struggle of the long trusted seed).

Barry Ballard’s poetry has most recently appeared in Prairie Schooner, The Connecticut Review, Margie, and Puerto del Sol. His most recent collection is A Body Speaks Through Fence Lines (Pudding House, 2006) He writes from Burleson, Texas. (abballard at hotmail dot com)

Date of Publication: 02 May 2007