Tuesday, March 8, 2011

Gardener laughs.

the best laughter comes,
when nothing is funny but nothing is wrong-when being is being been, and it doesn't matter who hears you.

Once there was a princess who lived too long under the rule of a brutal king. The king was protective and frightening. His rules were simple and selfish, his reign was dictatorial. He knew little of love and lots of power, and his princess knew best how to hide and best how to smile for sake of ease.
She then met a neighboring royal servant. Born of a family divided, raised on self-will and addiction. The servant knew how grim and grotesque the world outside of the chapel, the green lawns and the gardens that composed the royal city were. No one in all the villages, near or far, had seen such a wise servant, who knew the glories of royalty and chose still to serve. They told the princess how good it felt to work, to earn.
The princess thus learned to deserve, and called far out to a duchess- in a town whose name she was unaware. The duchess was raised in the faded glory of a kingdom lost in might. She wanted not to lead, but to take direction and to teach. She needed not the people of a land turned against her, she needed the beckoning of a princess, she needed a friend.
and the three made a garden- The princess, the duchess, and the servant. they planted vines and flowers of different colors and scents and their plantings were vast and beautiful. No one from the gardener's villages recognized the flowers as they expanded from boundary to boundary. No one knew their work, but all learned to reap their rewards.
And when the roses were cut, and brought to wives of knights for anniversaries. They were given to girls by their mothers so that they could learn to wave themselves crowns. They were eaten up by animals, who had seen no such exotic plants. The cut flowers decorated the homes of the impoverished, and spread the bounty of community- a concept unannounced to the public of the gardener's villages.
Eventually the three grew elderly, and sat together outside on the snowy ground. Their earnings had been spent on the flowers that had been picked and could not grow outside in these conditions.they no longer had royal names, and they no longer had youthful beauty. In these months, they no longer had a service to provide, and they no longer had their blossoms. Still the gardeners had each other. and together they would sit, in what was once the dress of a wealthy class, turned to rags. They sat on the ground that once had blossoms and beauty, and now was barren and bloodied white.
But the three sat together, cold, calm, and wise- and they laughed. Each because the other two were so beautiful in comparison. Each because their hands looked so much older not concealed in mud and clay. Each   because they were at least together, and because they sat where they belonged, and because the honest emptiness of the earth without their work was something no one knew.
As cliched, as it was, they were summer gardeners. And winter vagabonds. And what kept them rooted- was the background giggle of friendship.

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