Stanley's garden, 2005

This 2005 postcard was an invitation to celebrate the 100th birthday of the poet Stanley Kunitz, at Poets House, which he helped establish. I'd heard Kunitz read at the Dodge Poetry Festival, and picked up a couple of his books. Kunitz (1905-2006) was also a gardener, according to Wikipedia:

Kunitz divided his time between New York City and Provincetown, Massachusetts, for most of his life. He enjoyed gardening and maintained one of the most impressive seaside gardens in Provincetown. He was a founder of the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, where he was a mainstay of the literary community, and of Poets House in Manhattan.

I'm assuming this photo of Kunitz was taken in his Provincetown garden. The photo, by Marnie Crawford Samuelson, is from his last book, "The Wild Braid: A Poet Reflects on a Century in the Garden."

Here is a poem from his 1995 collection, "Passing Through." 

Touch Me

Summer is late, my heart.
Words plucked out of the air
some forty years ago
when I was wild with love
and torn almost in two
scatter like leaves this night
of whistling wind and rain.
It is my heart that's late,
it is my song that's flown.
Outdoors all afternoon
under a gunmetal sky
staking my garden down,
I kneeled to the crickets trilling
underfoot as if about
to burst from their crusty shells;
and like a child again
marveled to hear so clear
and brave a music pour
from such a small machine.
What makes the engine go?
Desire, desire, desire.
The longing for the dance
stirs in the buried life.
One season only,
                          and it's done.
So let the battered old willow
thrash against the windowpanes
and the house timbers creak.
Darling, do you remember
the man you married? Touch me,
remind me who I am.

Passing Through:
The Later Poems, New and Selected
W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.