The last minutes in the garden... a silent valediction to everything that's been good to me, and precious and glorious; a gratitude of the heart; a most profound feeling of appreciation and thankfulness. And how silent and lonesome the garden had looked, devoid of all my statues and fountains and birdbaths; so lacking in sweetness and the charm provided by all my little darling friends... a riot of mellowness and humbleness, and burgundy vegetation mingling ever so unassumingly with the last of the summer roses—those lovely, extraordinary jewels of the end of a season; like that last sublime breath of the dying.
And on that bush—three perfect Bonica roses singing under the nippiness of the morning, and the chilliness of the autumnal air, with all the melancholy and enchantment of an unforgettable and ever changing October. The three perfect little roses—the three little loves of my womb? Sweetly protected in my bosom forevermore. And for some unexplained reason, I thought of them, of my babies, on that long ago season of all winters when we first arrived here, more than twenty years ago...
How naive I then was, and how young and innocent at heart; incomplete, fragmented and so devoid of true devotion and nearly all the luster of a sanctified heart... how precious the gifts of age is, for only time can bring those changes to one's heart. Although it is now always like that.
And now it was time to leave. Leaves swirled about me as I stood there, under a shower of spreading yellows and toasted reds and deep oranges, content to stare and feel the crispiness and freshness and the purity of autumn against such amazing sky...
And the garden itself—how much it had grown in all these passed years. It grew. My heart's garden had grown too. So lovely, and so nurturing and gloriously content in the things that most humans cannot see, or can even begin to understand.
Hours later on that long road South I woke up to the realization that we were gone. Really gone and faraway from everything that we hold so dear to our hearts. A most sudden change in weather made me trembled, even inside the car. Rough winds rocked the sad vegetation of the Western cities, and a lowliness to a sky absent of any glory brought to mind places I have never seen, or never been to. Right at twilight Green River, WY, appeared on my left side out of the cold thin air like a blurry vision. Some ghost town that is—silently enveloped, as it was, by a ghostly-like white veil of thin snow. The lights of little houses down low on the road clumped together resembling tired fireflies in an island of igloos. How pathetically sad everything looked. Or was it just my heart?
