-This poem reflects on a garden recovering at evening after a day of high summer heat, where relief, scent, and quiet resilience return with dusk.
When evening reaches through the beds,
the leaves begin to ease their hold,
the basil lifts, the beans uncoil,
and tomato stems breathe back their green.
All day the garden bore the sun,
its blossoms fixed in glaring light,
its rooted life made slow by noon,
its fragrance held close in the dust.
Now water darkens every row,
the soil gives off its living scent,
and all that bent, or hushed, or dimmed,
returns a little to itself.
So much of high summer is this,
not only strain, but what survives it,
the garden keeping through the heat,
then opening again at dusk.