Barbara Westwood Diehl on “Why I Waited This Long to Tend the Garden”

Why. So many poems are an attempt to answer why. We poke and prod at possible answers to see which ones hold up under scrutiny. We throw handfuls of practical and ridiculous possibilities at the wall to see which ones will stick. We scatter reasons like seeds to see which will take root. Some never sprout. Some send out sprawling vines. Some produce fruit. For the writers among us, the answers may not be as interesting as all that conjecturing. All that experimenting.

My why question for this poem: Why I procrastinate—or sometimes don’t do what I’m supposed to do at all—and the effects of my neglect. Though neglect has a negative connotation, and the consequences of my not tending the garden—standing back to observe its wildness deeply—may not have been so bad after all.

Waiting sounds so much better.

Although the poem appears to have a tidy structure with its two-line stanzas (like furrows made with a hoe!), I let the line lengths sprawl. I varied sentence structure and mixed complete sentences with fragments. Although the poem moves naturally from April through September, the moods are varied, erratic. Love and longing and sorrowing and acceptance. But not in any tidy trajectory. Life and gardens tend to ramble, to grow in fits and starts. At least for me.

So my because answers may not have provided a simple and precise response to my why—but I liked that imaginative meandering. That good long walk through wild memory.