romance

by uzwi

A garden lawn should be like a round green pool, especially in twilight. It shouldn’t be large. The plantings around it–foxgloves & monbretia, gladeoli, huge hollyhocks, night-scented stocks–should lean over the smooth dark turf as if they’re leaning out over water. There should be a sense of seclusion, as if the plantings stretch away in all directions, too thick to walk in & steadily changing their nature from tended to untended. At one end, a gap between well-grown fuschias allows access; at the other, under an arch thick with white rambler roses, two or three steps lead to a lower garden you can’t quite see. Under the arch the lawn gathers & brims & curves. There’s a faint sense of water falling away quietly the other side. One late evening in early July–really, it’s almost dark–you watch a dragonfly hunting over the grass; & without thinking–but never hurrying–you take off your clothes & walk into the lawn & swim to the other side, where you sit in the scent of roses & stocks & stare for a moment or two into the lower garden & the gathering dark before you take the worn slippery steps down. Not even the briefest look back.

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