A Moment on This Trip
Dr. Lester shared this poem with me written by someone he helped along the way. I think it defines Dr. Lester as no other comment has to date. He has been a gardener his entire life. Thank goodness he has been.
A Moment On This Trip
If a left turn instead of a right
Had brought me anywhere but in sight
Of that garden hidden under
An horizon of wheat, would I wonder
At finding such a gardener there?
In a wilderness of crops his care
Was raising flowers! Not a slight,
Bent, or worn man, his ordinary height
Loomed over his plant rows a cool shade
When, hearing me stop, he straightened, spade
Still in hand, adjusting his hat,
And came toward me. His shadowed face
seemed flat
And for a moment I was afraid
Until he was so close that I made
His features out. “I’ve lost my way.”
It seemed an absurd thing to say.
What mistake could there be in my luck
In happening amid this sun-struck
Unbounded vacant land upon
This extraordinary phenomenon?
My impulse was ask his name, ask why here
Raise such beauty that it is more near
Hallucination than vision,
Begging any chance comer’s derision.
But what I asked was my way, and he
unassumingly directed me
Back onto the road where I said
I wanted to go. My voice parroted
His words. Then there was nothing to do
After thanking him but follow through
On his clear instructions, I turned.
Now I retrace mistakes across Land burned
Even more harshly before my eyes
That see now only the mirage rise
Blossoming from the pavement: row
On row of his flowers leading me grow.
July 1966
The Author was not revealed due to Doctor/Patient relationship
This is a continuation of the gift noted above. This was a young lady from New York City who had made the mistake of marrying a sadistic psychologist and now lived in Oklahoma. She introduced herself with a poem referring to herself as amorphous protoplasm smeared on asphalt in the Oklahoma sun. Her maximal influence on others was the flared nostrils of distaste from the acrid odor wafted from this brown stain, As noted in her poem, she found her way and did much better with the passage of time and practicing what she knew to do which was to convert her inner turmoil into poetic form. She alerted me to the inner importance of hoping to convert inner weedy and tangled thoughts into making contact with others. She encouraged me to write in this form and, over time, I wrote a few hundred forms which I do not think qualify as poetry—but Okie expressions of observations in a form that may communicate to some other member of our species on this journey. One spring morning, my oldest daughter walked across my imagination, and I wrote one poem.
Moon Crystals
Moon crystals sprinkling
Half-formed buds
Feathery silver-lace
Once seen girl
In a morning sun
Becoming woman-face.
Since then a privilege has been seeing and experiencing a number of springs, morning suns and daughters moving into their journey, as along the way they go. Many of the young people are distant nieces, sons, nephews, grandsons and granddaughters of all shapes and colors merge with the morning sun and the budding trees. Not to mention those who failed to bud and did not leave the night, their rhythms silenced by the clamor of all morning rhythms.
