The Japanese Garden

To listen to me reading this piece, you can download the audio file.

The weeping plum trees bow to the approaching visitor, before the entrance gate, before the tea house behind its screen of bamboo. A grassy lawn, curving paths, rocks, a stand of purple iris next to a yellow-flowered bush alive with bees. We hear the waterfalls before we see them, short broad cascades into wide pools, like stair landings, leading down into the greenish, still pond.

We circle counterclockwise, sit for a moment on a wooden bench in an open building where a group of German tourists consult their guidebooks, and another woman in a hat sleeps in the sun against the white wall, her head bent slightly to the side. The lesson here is texture and contrast: I run my hand along the undulating close-trimmed hedge of yellow-green juniper bordered by low reddish grass with softly swaying foxtail heads. In the curved knees of the juniper rest wide-leaved peonies, dark and glossy, now done with flowering and neatly dead-headed: what a sight they must have been a month ago. Above: old hemlocks and firs; the soft needles of tamaracks; white birches; a gingko; a pear.

Water, too, is ordered: running here in a wide canal, here over rounded pebbles, here in a narrow stone channel; rushing over waterfalls, dripping from a mouth of bamboo, standing mirror-like in pools that reflect the sky. And from the murky green rise the koi, the size of human infants, fluttering their fins like wings: orange, canary yellow, alarming white. I stand on the wooden walkway and they rise to the surface, gasping, like guilty thoughts and forgotten promises, black-spotted, eyes rolling with reproach. Legless ones, captives in this watery limbo.

I return their stare and then leave the platform, moving back onto the path, up into the shadows of taller trees where a thin squirrel digs furiously for the nut he’s hidden. On the edge of the black woods is a stand of maidenhair fern, lush and astonishing; beneath a fir, pale yellow pendant blooms hang above broad leaves where turquoise dragonflies are laying eggs with a delicately curving touch of their tails. The path circles back toward the pond; I stop in dappled shade to consider a close-trimmed boxwood  and rock, joined together in a lifelong pas de deux.

And here, glimpsed through the low branches of the spruces, a female duck stands, in one of the cascade pools, regal and calm, her long neck and back striped brown as if with a carefully-dripped glaze. On the bank, her half-grown brood sleeps in the sun, a beak tucked behind a wing, bodies comfortably and confusingly entangled into a unity of warm feathers and forgetfulness. The mother watches, on one foot,  timeless and motionless as bronze, except for the blinking of an eye.

Comments

[Jean]

Gorgeous. And so lovely to hear your voice, Beth. I liked the coi best!

[kat]

Mmm. Lovely.

[marja-leena]

Beautiful cool and serene gardens, and so wonderful to hear your voice, Beth.

[Kaycie]

Gorgeous prose and pictures. As I've said before, your voice is quite beautiful.

[leslee]

Wonderful prose poem, Beth. And lovely photos of greenery, too. Even in the photos, I can see how you'd be inspired.

[anasalwa]

Ohh...beth, how wonderful to hear your lovely voice as I scrolled down the pictures and experiencing a peaceful moment. Thank you.

[AMS]

There is a cool list of North America's Top 25 Japanese Garden's on blist. Check it out!

http://app.blist.com/#/blist/aamitchell/North-America-s-Top-25-Japanese-Gardens

[Fr. Scott]

Beth, I recognize the perspective of photo #2. It was there that a dear friend of mine and I had a very important chat. I was to remember him when I visited there. So now, with your help, I do. Thank you so much.

[Robb]

Kia ora Beth,
What an awesome expansion to your use of this medium. Beautiful voice, words, and images that take into another world for a short visit. Kia ora Beth.
Rangimarie,
Robb

[Zuleme]

I've been there! It is beautiful and we love the koi. I'll listen to the audio later, what a great idea to post it that way.

[Fred Garber]

Lush, green and cooling for me on this hot day.