Peaceful Garden

I was reading some of Keats' sadder poems today.

And then I was pondering a complaint I'd received for my humorous dismissal of the book, Better Never to Have Been: The Harm of Coming into Existence.

Anyway, this little poem came to me. It was inspired by a story someone told me:

Peaceful garden at midday
with people sitting on benches...
but perhaps one of them is in the trenches
of his mind, struggling how to say,
how to describe, the torment inside
as he watches the birds glide
branch to branch.

And for all that, maybe the birds, too, hide
secret distress, perhaps all their twittering
expresses their embittering experience
with the grim task of building nests!

It's not that life is ever, truly, a breeze,
he thinks, and finally sees
that even his is one of relative ease.

In this strange way the garden brought him peace.