Ghost Eden

after Anthony Haughey’s “Settlement”

Garden of rock.
Garden of brick and heather.
Garden of cranes with their hands raised
as if they know the yellow answer:
to gather together—safety in numbers.
Garden of drywall frames, holes for windows
punched out like teeth. Garden of bar fights.
Garden of rubble and gaps,
spectral for-sale signs knocked
from wooden posts, bleached down
to numbers ending in gardens of overgrown lots.
We are falling into ruin, garden
of scaffolding and shale and gravel—
give us back our peace: a half-built garden
of theft, treasures hidden in darkness,
newspapers crumpled on subfloors telling us
to hold fast to that which is good.
Garden of rebar and saplings with trunks
encased in corrugated piping
because many animals can girdle
a tree’s bark quickly: deer, stray cats, rabbits.
Garden of Tyvek wrap loosed
and flapping like a ship’s sail
in the gales, in the sheeting storms.
Hanging laundry left out in the garden
past darkness, fruit from the tree
of human-ness: socks, shirts, underpants.
Garden of long exposures, half-light, traces
that empty themselves in tire treads running
like ladders through red clay mud:
the dirt from which we are formed
and crushed and formed again.