Gather Ye
Second Place — 2024 First Things Poetry Prize
Ladew Gardens
Hand-in-hand, through the famous garden’s roses,
We stroll while gangs of children run amok
Unwatched. You don’t want kids, you tell me. Struck
By the remontants, we pause, and our poses
Briefly fail. Late light cut through by green shades
In patterns like a roulette wheel. Dark nears.
Now, by exposed roots, I glimpse rusted shears
Half-buried in the mulch, the separate blades
Like hands of a stopped clock, for which all hours
Are one, the moment of eternity,
Boundless as space, and just as void, and frigid—
Or wronged lovers, whose sundered hearts grow rigid
With loneliness, until they cannot be
Coaxed by a touch, and do not care for flowers.
—Ryan Wilson
Image by BushelOcrabs1814, licensed via Creative Commons. Image cropped.
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