A small pond dug
into a footpath that bisects
a French garden. The neat
hedgerows bend, obey.
There must be wind. Clay
so clean, so reddened in
the light, our eye rakes it
for bits of litter, heel-scuffs,
a sparrow, anything —
What sort of people design such order,
and who tends it? Is this heaven?
Or is peace that almond haze where
hard edges slip glimpsed through
the doorless gate, the unclipped
immaculate beyond the vined
wall that darkens the middle distance?