for James Baxter Gentry

A faithful man shall abound with blessings: but he that maketh haste to be rich shall not be innocent.

 Proverbs 28:20 

My grandfather built a garden

where no trees were, on the bare spine of coral ridge a reef a mangrove

swamp a sand bar shallow inland sea the water crawled in everywhere day after day

world without end: pelicans play all day long and the sun

slides bare and brazen over the small sparkles and the insects at evening among the palms

the raccoon trundles his fat behind along, his burglar’s face regards the house

main house little house garden house greenhouse 

mahoe, bleeding heart, papaya, banana, key lime, mahogany, fiddle leaf fig in the garden 

old man, Cuban petticoat, rootspine, guano, princess, African oil, he held us in his palm;

nurse shark tiger shark man’o’war red snapper batfish yellowtail out beyond the mangroves

a thick sweet salt smell, blacksnake lizards cat hermit crabs slumber and skitter in the sun

Fiji Island fan, spindle, Australian cabbage, Chinese fan, triangle date, every day

upright in the blue air, the earth soaked and brimming over amid the labor of days --

all night long the screaming forces had raged around his house:

“oh honey, I thought I’d lost my garden, I cried for my trees lying there in the sun,”

he told me how he’d gone out shaken into the savaged morning garden

all his trees down on the ground -- lying stormflat under the tough old mangroves.

When I was sick,  he told me, when the big storms come, about the palms

“Puerto Rican hat, Anguillan thatch, Cuban royal, Rio Grande, the palms,

honey -- chonta, everglade, palmyra, clumping fishtail, I’ll never forget that day

christmas, zombie, Bismark, coconut, yellow butterfly back up over the mangroves --

honey, the palms -- by noon they were all standing, every last one, I went in the house

and brought your grandmother out to see what had happened in the garden”

Cuban belly, bottle, buccaneer, solitaire, MacArthur, needle, lady, heeled under the sun

white powder puff, heliconia, ixora, bougainvillea, gardenia, stephanotis in the sun

at night the sky full of stars soaked clear through, and brimming over the palms

roseapple, gooseberry, shaving brush, Jamaican dogwood, ginger, bromeliads in his garden

he spent his life for aloe, crown of thorns, rain lily, jacaranda, sea grape, spent his days

bird of paradise, Spanish bayonet, night blooming cereus, hibiscus for his house,

we went out in the flat-bottomed boat after conch, delicate egrets fished the mangroves

when we were children we rode our bikes along the dirt road among gnats and mangroves

we walked out into the sea among seaweed gulls rocks jellyfish our skin burning in the sun

in my bad time my grandfather told me his fable, to live on in his house

sacred tree of Buddha, bluebird vine, Surinam cherry, Spanish moss hanging under the palms

A dizzying smell: century plant, carambola, spodilla, frangipani, starfruit filling the day

later I found Pan, plump and laughing under fronds, watching over the back of the garden.

We stand up in the garden; an abrupt salt shadow startles the mangroves,

a redtailed hawk wheels down the day; we lie down in the sun

the sea wind rustles the palms, Chinese orchid, lignum vitae, jatropha drown the house

Moira Gentry