Each one of us is given a garden of Friendship

To tend throughout our lives however long

Its blooms are filled up with the sweetest nectar

Or the bitterest gall if it happens things go wrong

We are given seeds that grow if we are careful

The seasonal and perennial, all are fair

But the rarest fruits will bring forth shady trees

To protect the garden when you can’t be there

We never know which seeds will fall on pathways

Or which shall fall upon the dusty ground

Or which of those will be consumed by weed’s traps

Or which can bloom just briefly once they’re found

As younger gardeners we are so careless

We never know the talent that’s in us all

We can make a bloom with just a smile

For a lucky few it stays quite natural

Our childhood gardens always seem so vivid

With multicoloured blooms that few can match

But if and when we happen to revisit

We find a dry, untended, dusty patch

As we start to grow the blooms are subtler

And some of them are covered in sharp thorns

We find out about the way that poison

Seeps through the soil and kills but never warns

We learn across the years about our favourites

And transplant them as we move to pastures new

Although we never notice as we do it

It's as natural as breathing in our view

Then as our lives get busier we will often

Tend our precious gardens less and less

But luckily for us our blooms are hardy

And require fewer efforts to progress

The luckiest of gardeners pick up flowers

From many different countries on their way

And their exotic colours and different fragrance

Will make their blooms a more attractive spray

As the years go by we share our garden

With boyfriend, girlfriend, partner, husband, wife

They introduce their own blooms to the pasture

And they brighten up and colour in our life

Before we leave the garden for the last time

We pass on our advice to children who

Will tend to their own garden, but in passing

May pick up from our garden a bloom or two

It is our greatest gift this Friendship garden

Keep it growing no matter what the cost

Because once you close the gate upon the garden

You never will regain all that you’ve lost.

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