Cory Alone III
Wednesday, November 14th, 2007
CORYThe first time I sleep in my enchanted garden alone, six wild geese fly over and a big white owl, coasting. I sleep in the tower in a camp bed. It’s like being posted overseas in a war. Or being on an expedition. BEATI plant a fig in secret. And Madonna Lillies. 500 daffodil and narcissi where the cherries are to go, at the end of the moat. We build an estate, Ed and I, between us. Old bits and pieces of a great house, shards and fragments, staring with red eyes at one another across the nettles. We string them on a green thread, like discarded jewels. We build a house, see, so reasonable. So kindly. So perfectly content - you feel people had been sleeping and talking and dancing and fighting and growing and making love and living and dying there for a thousand years. It isn’t all fun and games of course. Nothing is. Not even gardening. There’s a form of hypocrisy common to nearly all gardeners. Known to upset the gentle amateur, dear listeners, it has been known to affect even the most hardened professional, who is not, generally speaking, a sentimental or a squeamish man.It’s the human weakness which, accompanying our determination to rid ourselves of our slugs and snails, makes us reluctant next morning to contemplate the result of meta and sawdust. Having enjoyed our own good breakfast, we come out to behold the slimy greenish remains. Snails exuding their entrails from under their beautiful delicate shells. Big black slugs, four inches long; little black slugs, one inch long. Gulping poison.