Poems by Jeff Tobin
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The Garden
by Jeff Tobin
From Canary Spring 2025
Jeff lives between the Everglades’ river of grass and the ceaseless Atlantic ocean, watching ospreys, manatees and flamingoes in this wild biological canvas.
We cultivate the earth,
planting seeds with hands both nurturing and negligent,
in soil rich with history and strewn with plastic.
We walk the green edges of our own making,
caretakers on paper, yet vandals at heart,
loving the view, yet blocking the sun.
Our footprints, deep and lasting,
mark the paths we claim as progress,
heavy with the weight of good intentions,
light with the touch of forgetfulness.
We water gardens with rivers rerouted,
quenching thirsts while deserts expand,
blossoms bloom as ice caps melt—
growth and loss in a single breath.
In the night, we light up the sky,
outshining stars with our electric glow,
beacons of advancement, shadows of the Milky Way,
both illuminating and obscuring.
We harvest the wind, harness the sun,
hold power in the palms of our hands,
yet tremble before the storms we’ve stirred,
engineers of both salvation and catastrophe.
In each act of preservation, a hint of destruction,
in every innovation, a tinge of depletion—
paradoxes planted in the garden we tend,
where every truth contains its contradiction.
© Jeff Tobin