Garden Erotica in Late Summer

Children run past lovers entwined in shadowy paths. Slowly, old folks search for a familiar flower. Energetic men set up tripods on the manicured grass and a girl, wearing a tiara, poses shyly atop clouds of white chiffon. "She is a princess. Look at the princess," say the mothers to their daughters, soaked in fountain water. They have not yet learned to be girls, they stick their hands in the shooting water, delight in the high spray. Too close to the edge, they fall back, legs apart.

Earnest students of Tai Chi flow in unison with their teacher. Backpacks are scattered on sacred ground between native plant paths and formal geometry, balance and proportion. Circling the insecure boundary, I become negative space. Frogs jump before me into ponds thick with algae.

Where can one find these stones and sand, this black and white? Where shall one look for the infinitesimal and the infinite, the place of profane normality? Freedom and control, I skirt your extremities, I traverse your edges, I sit like a focal point in your presence. I pose, legs apart.

Sometimes in the late summer I stride between pleasure and power as if it were possible. I cross the private and the public, the normal and the immoral, the traditional and the natural. The garden in this season allows this overlap, like Jesus Christ gives the avoidance of terror.

Taboo.

Nature, culture, indoors, outdoors, boundaries, balance, no-man's land.
City, concrete, wall, lawn, untamed, uncivilized, raw.

Furniture
Paint
Tables
Rugs
TV.

All is given unto me.