Twilight. Stone steps. A rusted iron gate. Slightly hidden in the shadows, a garden beckons, leads you deeper inside. Your head spins from the aroma of honeysuckle, lilac, magnolia, and roses. The song of crickets and cicadas leads you on to where she waits, Sarah, Spirit of the Sacred Garden and is treasures. Perhaps, for a moment, you see her in the shadows—pale, diaphanous, quick as the hummingbird drinking from the cypress vine delicately curling up the old trellis, as it has every summer since 1939, when the garden was loved and tended in its hiding place next to the grey stone cottage.
Welcome to Sarah’s Garden. Enter, stroll toward the stone bench under an ancient willow oak tree. A butterfly brushes the wind. Mourning doves feed from the grass, anticipating nightfall. Two rabbits drink from clover before hiding in the hedge.
From the moss-covered bench, you hear the mill train whistle and the sounds of traffic coming from another time and place. Slowly, the evening falls on your shoulders, so you close your eyes and breathe clean, fresh, Carolina air.
Silently she moves in behind you, voicelessly asks to sit beside you. Voicelessly, you answer her, “Yes.”
Sarah’s Garden is my sanctuary, my temple, and the Mother Earth beneath my feet. Mother, goddess, and guardian; snow queen, demon, and prowler of night, she holds my words in a clean, fresh volume, written on a narrow bed of silence.
I have gathered a bouquet of poems for you. Take your time with each of them. Enjoy their color, scent, and story. If you like what you read, make Sarah’s Garden a part of your life, a home you return to every time you pull this volume from your shelf.
Tara Allan Stewart
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Introduction to Sarah's Garden