There’s just something special
about a botanical garden -
this one, the Berkshire,
tucked between the folded hills of western Massachusetts,
where stone walls and winding roads
seem to know your name.
The morning began in Albany,
the city still stretching awake -
a few lights blinking off along the Hudson,
a heron lifting from the shallows,
the car filling with the scent of coffee
and early adventure.
Eastward we drove,
through a patchwork of gold fields and small towns,
past roadside stands selling cider and mums,
past church steeples sharp as pencils
against a rinsed October sky.
The Berkshires rose slowly,
like breath drawn in after prayer.
And when we arrived,
the garden waited -
quiet, sunlit, generous.
Its wooden gate, its lilac air -
songbirds trilling in leafy cloisters,
gentleness everywhere.
Paths of gravel and grass
wandered as though they, too,
were simply enjoying the day.
A greenhouse shimmered with glass and memory;
wooden trellises leaned into ivy’s slow affection;
the benches, worn smooth by kindness,
invited rest without asking for it.
We walked where peonies unfold
their fragrant gowns in morning light,
where foxglove spires lift up like prayers,
and asters purple into night.
The Steady One walks slow, but true,
her eyes on ferns, on bees at wing -
she sees not only bloom, but being,
and hears the soul in everything.
And then Pond Garden - my favorite spot.
Where the pond holds the sky
in its patient hands.
Tall pines stand sentinel overhead,
their green still deep,
unwilling to yield to autumn just yet.
Along the bank,
wildflowers linger…
yellows, pinks, a little lavender -
the last chorus before frost.
Water lilies float like thoughts
I’d forgotten to finish.
We rest beneath the arbor’s hush,
where vines like lovers gently lean -
the hour grows full, the world grows holy,
and time, once rash, slips soft, unseen.
Everything moves so slightly…
a ripple, a drifting leaf,
the quiet pulse of wind
through cattails and reeds.
Here, I could stay forever.
The air feels older,
as if it remembers every step
ever taken here in wonder.
Even the light
seems to slow its breathing.
There’s a hush
that isn’t silence,
but attention -
the garden listening,
the world leaning closer.
We never rush our leaving here.
The gift is not the rose alone -
but how, within this living silence,
we find ourselves more deeply known.
And when I finally rise to leave,
the path curves gently away,
back toward the car,
back toward the towns and the hum of life.
But I carry the pond’s reflection in me -
the trees doubled in water,
the bright scatter of petals,
the stillness that feels like love.
There’s just something special,
I keep thinking,
about this place -
the Berkshire Botanical Garden,
and the quiet mercy
of an early fall day
that lets you remember
how beautiful it is
to simply be here.
GBS
2024
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