Camphor’s

I am looking for a garden to visit; pines or birches perhaps, overgrown undergrowth notwithstanding; full of peace. Vivid flowers dulling in the reflected sheen off the moon, but jasmines and night flowers blooming bright, enchanting and calling though a subtle strength nothing like the trap a spider lays in her fine webs, oh no. Or maybe not. In there I would seek the shadows with their inexplicable allure (A snake! A boot! A log! The ditches! — if not the army of red ants contentedly sleeping until you kick over their hill and then they would come after you like the vengeance of God Himself) and stomach tightening fear that nonetheless is more than the abyss of self-contemplation, which certainly looks right back. All like the flames of a fire licking gently up, warming you, oh so innocently promising no pain, not unlike the candles I am forbidden, but that bonfire of a calm winter night: the one you reach for to warm your hands though you know that you’ll burn your fingers through the mitts; the dancing, happy, amazing flames that one can never trust once you witness their treachery and see just how all-consuming they can be.

I want to sit under the shadow of a creaking tree under a moon, or perhaps not. Just a place I can be blessedly alone with my thoughts, where all these intrusions of technology do not measure time with their loud ticks and endless alarms, where the night breeze can chill me to being half-frozen, but not dead, oh no, for then I could see stars and feel the wind and be alive with my thoughts. Nor would I want to write down each thickened dewdrop of thought, for that refuge would be open again should I need to go back and do it all over again.

I want resolution for all this confusion and turmoil of simple questions turned complicated, or perhaps complicated situations oversimplified, and I have always found it with these elements of nature – trees and rain and clouds floating free across the face of a fat moon.

There is so much green.
Is none of it for me?