“Imagining Botanic Gardens (Singapore)” by Michael Mirolla

The heat should rush through you like a sword of bees.

The humidity should follow to finish

you off. Leaving you to reach for breath where

there’s none to be had. A choke hold that squeezes

like a tire hung around your chest. Like a knee

that just won’t let you rise again. But all

the while you lean against the edge of a space

that neither heat nor humidity

could have prepared themselves for. A space

that takes heat and humidity by the throat

and transforms them into an image

that defies its position at the crossroads

between sun-reflecting skyscrapers

and the exhaust of duelling motor coaches.

You should be able feel it just beyond

where you’re standing. Just past the gate. Do you?

Like a fluid or perhaps the remnants

of a spirit snake, the breeze flowing through

its shadowed pathways in search of lungs to fill,

broken vessels to console, pessimists

to smile at. Can you imagine it?

It helps strangeness become familiar

for those too far from home … for those detached

like the randomness of violet flowers

whipped across a tiled floor that forms a circle

ideal for meditation. Or are they

spiders disguised as fragments of flowers

to escape the stomps of frightened humans?

If you were to squint at them long enough,

transmogrification is sure to occur.

Anything becomes the possible here.

Anything? Yes, anything, it whispers.

Miniature jungles mere meters

from a traffic jam. Otter families

crossing between ristorante tables.

Cannonball trees loaded down by gravity.

Seeds within three-kilo fruits emitting

cyanide when rubbed the wrong way. Pools

where stone fish swim amid rainbow orchids.

All wrapped in the fatal beauty and sighs

of decay. Or the knife-edged spikes that bring

resurrection with a single unfolding.

You would get to choose. All you need to do

is enter. Come. Come in. It awaits you,

anxious for you to leave the mundane behind,

to succumb to the sacred. Step forward.

That’s all it takes. And you would. Surely you would.

But for one thing: the temporary nature

of any reprieve. Upon your return,

heat and humidity await at the gates

redoubled. Await to swallow a body

weakened and left to fend for itself.

And this time no garden will be able

To save you. To make life breezy again.

To pull you out of that stony funk

heavier than any atmospheric pressure.

No. Best to stay where you are. Best to take

your chances with what you know.

Or is that it really? Or can it be

the horrible fear that the real thing can’t

possibly match up to the imagined?

MICHAEL MIROLLA has published close to 20 books of poetry and fiction. Among his awards: three Bressani Prizes. His novella, The Last News Vendor, won the 2020 Hamilton Literary Award. A symposium on Michael’s writing was held in Toronto on May 25, 2023. He makes his home near Gananoque in the Thousand Islands.

Michael’s website: https://www.michaelmirolla.com/