My Grandmother's Garden

364 Christleton Avenue

My grandmother's garden,

round the modest little house

she lived her life in,

on Christleton Avenue

in 1950's Kelowna,

had wisteria and mimosa

and pinks,

pungent in the

slow decline of evening,

and bachelor buttons,

forsythia

and roses,

roses covering the arched trellis

above the gate

I used to swing on

through the slow,

sultry summer afternoons,

everything blooming

in all the summer gardens.

In the morning

the sound of water

hitting the side of the house

woke me

as grandma

hosed everything down

before the day got hot,

and lowered the canvas awnings

like sleepy eyelids

over the windows

at the front of

the little house.

In memory,

at my grandma's,

it is always summer,

mornings scented with

fresh lake breezes

and dry grasses,

bathing suits strung out

on the line

just waiting to be

pulled down again

for the next swim.....

all the childhood pleasures

live at grandma's

in my memory,

how we would sit

smiling at each other

in her back porch

listening to the thunder

rolling in the afternoons,

the smell right after,

just as the rain started

hitting the thirsty earth

Once I swam in the lake

during an afternoon storm,

metallic scent, strange silences

the world gun-metal gray

Some mornings

I'd swing in the hammock

under the weeping willow,

behind it

hollyhocks and

sweet peas

climbed wooden stakes

and string

back where

my grandpa

parked his car.

He'd come home for lunch,

gruff,

but with a kind twinkle

in his eye

and give me a dime for

the ice cream truck

when it came

Saskatoon berries bunched

beside the house -

the ladies at afternoon tea,

in hats and gloves,

all from the prairies,

ate jam mixed with memories

from the ripened fruit

In those days

there was no bridge

across the lake

When we went on a trip

my dad said

a ferry

would take us across

I was disappointed

with the big white boat

I had been expecting

a small magical being

with beating wings

and made my father smile

My grandma saved my life

when I was a child

and she did it

in the simplest way she knew:

by keeping house,

by tending her garden,

the same day after day,

routine and safe,

showing me,

child from a different world

of drink and poverty,

another way

that a life

could be.