Ed Bennett

My Dissolute Garden

How they love their gardens,
pruned and hedged to perfection,
each bloom a mirror of the next
each genus within its marked border,
color coded, mulched, much loved
for the monoculture sameness
born from the need to control.

My garden is unkempt,
no borders or boundaries
in this tangled plot of hybrids
living each to each on common soil
sharing sunlight, water and air
in the verdant entropy
of diverse color and kind.

I hear my neighbors “tsk”,
shake their heads at my shortcomings
so apparent in this wild patch
devoid of rhyme, reason or theme;
they will not see the beauty of
each unfettered swaying stem
free to be,
                        free to be.






Ed Bennett is a Telecommunications Engineer living in Las Vegas and a Staff Editor of Quill and Parchment. Originally from New York City, his work appeared in The Patterson Literary Review, The Externalist, Quill and Parchment, Touch: The Journal of Healing and Lavender Review. He is the author of “A Transit of Venus” published by The Lives You Touch Press.