My parents have a garden, a sort-of hidden garden, a sort-of other world tucked behind their rather normal-looking split-level house in a rather normal-looking small town neighborhood. And every summer when I pack up to go visit them, I daydream about that garden, about myself sitting in it with a cup of coffee, about the birds and the bunnies and the chipmunks and yes, even squirrels, who will be busy all around me.

Or I remember this moment from last summer, the light on my girl’s golden hair, my mind gently rocking with the rhythm of her swinging, and yes, even my boy begging me to be done with my coffee break.

Sitting in the garden this summer, in the same spot where I recorded that little video last summer, I wrote the first few lines of what became my song for week 34 of #songaweek2016, which you can hear here:

You’d be swinging with the breeze
shaded by the breathing leaves
if you were the garden’s child
drowsy as the birds and bees

you’d be singing newborn songs
with the water swept along
if you were the river’s child
you’d be flowing ever on

you’d be life you’d be breath
you’d be sleep and dreams and death
peals of laughter pools of tears
flights of joy and jolts of fear

you’d be climbing on the bones
of a long-forgotten poem
if you were the mountain’s child
patient as the ancient stone

you’d be diving in the dark
far beneath the crowded ark
if you were the ocean’s child
throbbing siren, silent shark

you’d be light you’d be sound
you’d be caverns underground
ceaseless waves of navy blue
reaching for receding moon