The Garden of Our Hearts
Poem by Christopher Isa Patrick Nelson

The cabbage of compassion needs a seed,
The heads of lettuce, gentleness, the wet;
These pods of peas, the second chance you plead,
Though owed the sowing, yield the equal yet.
The garden of our hearts has soil so rich
That thorns and thistles, anger we ignore,
Can choke our friendships’ berries to the ditch,
The memory of sweeter times before.
But even when the white of blight or snow –
The years apart, I mean, the harder times –
Blows in, blasts it, custodians still know:
We dig in dirt all day, in all the climes.

The roughworn hands alone make a place for God:
Though fruitful, pruned, and in a wild world, odd.

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