Your Own Gardender

Alas, I am rejected again. I submitted the following poem awhile back, and found now like the others, it was rejected. It's alright, I suppose. I am going to submit another. In the meantime, here is the rejected poem.

Your Own Gardener
Dig at that empty earth
Spread its treasure across your past
Until the weed that is
Resembles the vine that was
Destiny planted into past as a tree
And called a seed

Shape your past and future
Into one present
A semi-precious mound
Beloved, you think, by you in former dreams
And dappled with the precious light
Of a soothsayer who, with trained hands, kneads worries into platitudes
Until they harden under
The full baking of the sun

Tend your budding apprehensions
Lest you think the vine grown before its time
Clip, then
Clip away their tender shoots
Binding them to the vine
To make them such a part of you
That you know and are known by them

Pray, in time, that with the nourishment of your tears
The weight of its fruit will fall
Down
Into hands open for consolation
Soft as they are
Bred as they were to palm dreams turned vintage
And be led by the hands of a gardener
Their eyes blinded by you
As blinded you are
Having stared too long at a never-setting sun

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