I first came to that garden in the midst of so much change. Still stunned. My life changing all around me, in ways I didn’t even fully know then. And there was that garden, a beautiful swath of flowers and greenness, slightly wild, sunlit in the autumn chill. A woman, ineffably sad, told me this was Carmen’s garden. I understood at once that Carmen wasn’t there anymore. I didn’t learn until now that Carmen had passed away merely a month prior. And so I had been gazing at her handiwork, still.

All those things kept telling me to garden, to put things in the dirt, and give them light and water and make them grow. A free container gardening class. A community garden. A friend’s blog about gardening, life, and the times when life gets in the way of being able to garden. Another friend seeking my advice on places to find free dirt. The way tomato plants should smell. Seed swapping.

Carmen Farina, rest in peace. Thank you for your garden in the park, wild with flowers and green and light.

(Sea-brothers, I lower to you the ingenuity of dreams,
Strange lungs and bells to escape in; let me stay aboard last—
We amend our dreams in half-sleep. Then it seems
Easy to talk to the severe dead and explain the past.
Now they are saying, Do not be ashamed to stay alive,
You have dreamt nothing that we do not forgive.
And gentlier, Study something deeper than yourselves,
As, how the heart, when it turns diver, delves and saves.)

From “The Wreck of the Thresher” by William Meredith

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/171861

“It’s no different, really, from meeting another person. One has a reaction to the person physically. Also, there’s a metaphysical thing, and if a meeting of people is meaningful, it affects both their lives.”   —Barnett Newman on Vir Heroicus Sublimis