The Touch of the Gardener

     Today is my in-laws' sixtieth anniversary. Sixty years is the diamond anniversary, an occasion so rare there are few cards and no decorations to cover it. I wanted to write a little synopsis of their  marriage because it is such a testimony of the hand of God that a marriage so unlikely to succeed could last sixty years, but the story morphed into a poem. However, the symbolism of the poem is hard to understand without the back story, so I will try again with a short synopsis. In 1954 a sixteen year old girl from an alcoholic home on the wrong side of the tracks eloped with her twenty year old  fiance on leave from the army. They ran away to Idaho where they married without parental consent, then returned to Helena where Del left his new bride and went to Korea for two years.
     When he returned, they started having children and moved to Missoula, not too far from the tracks, which was fitting because Del worked for the railroad. It was there, through the intervention of some Christian friends, that they came to know Christ. They raised four children in a Christian home, and have doubled that investment by having eight grandchildren. I had the privilege of marrying their firstborn and eventually settling in Kalispell. The other two sons and a daughter live in or around Missoula. This poem is for Pat and Del, but it is about God.

The Touch of the Gardener

The chances of it working were one in sixty--

planting an immature rosebush

in a crack of soil

in a bottle strewn parking lot

on the wrong side of the tracks,

leaving it alone for two years

and expecting it to grow.

But it did grow

and began to blossom

almost immediately.

By then, the bottles were gone

the town had changed,

though the tracks 

were still nearby.

And in that unlikely place

a master gardener

found the struggling plant,

loved it,

and began to water it.

The roots sank deep

and the plant began to flourish.

When the time was right

the gardener took four cuttings,

established their roots

and planted them

not too far away.

In time they, too,

began to blossom.

What was once

a hastily planted rosebush

in the wrong part of town

became a rose garden

that passersby could see and enjoy

and, most of all, recognize

the touch of the Gardener.