The secret garden’s secret is it’s dying.
More actively: we mortals take its life.
Not all of us. Some gardeners work hard trying
to block, with shovel, hoe, and pruning knife,
the money floods we other folk let loose
to flow like black gold over garden walls.
We show great interest in attempts to sluice
the topsoil’s gold we cart in carryalls
to fertilise our fantasy we’re gods
and need no roots, or none that we can’t make.
We modern humans, jumped-up amphipods,
pretend we don’t need wildlife, and we stake
all species’ fate in underfunded schools
that clap for gardeners but can’t buy them tools.